HH $»n» 



[uman eleme^ 
'he making 
:hristian 



•Up 

fCELISM 




Glass t 

D00k._ 



Copyright! - 



C£___«GHT DEPOSIT! 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN 
THE MAKING OF A CHRISTIAN 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN 
THE MAKING OF A CHRISTIAN 

STUDIES IN PERSONAL EVANGELISM 



BY 



BERTHA CONDE 



SENIOR STUDENT SECRETARY FOR THE NATIONAL BOARD OF YOUNG WOMEN £ 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1917 



-fc 



UA' 



,t>\ 



C^ 



Copyright, 1917, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published September, 1917 



SEP 25 1917 




t.o© 

)CI.A476228 



o 



TO 
MY MOTHER 



5»jM 



PREFACE 

Any vital discussion of personal evangelism ought to be 
carried on between two individuals alone, if it is to be per- 
sonal; and therein lies the difficulty in writing a book on 
this subject. We are natually reticent about our inner life and 
shrink instinctively from revealing those processes by which 
our spirits have been disciplined and made fit for true fellow- 
ship with God. Nevertheless, we who are Christians need to 
help people to understand the laws of cause and effect as they 
apply to Christian experience; we must be able to answer 
some of the practical questions that are put to us by those who 
seek reality in the spiritual life and need working principles; 
and we want, by our counsel, to help and not to hinder those who 
are within our influence. People do not usually find their 
way into the kingdom without some personal help. Our 
Lord spent a large portion of His time in dealing with the 
personal life of individuals and yet His chosen method has 
long been neglected by His followers. 

This little book has been written in the hope that it may 
help to define the human element in the making of a Chris- 
tian. It does not pretend to deal with that part of the Chris- 
tian life which is hidden with Christ in God, but is concerned 
chiefly with the human side of Christian experience, the moral 
situation we have to face in our own hearts, and the personal 
challenge that we meet in the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is 
written in the belief that if we have a rational understanding 
of human nature and its normal reactions we can apply the 
message of the gospel with more wisdom and help many be- 
wildered or discouraged people to find their heavenly Father. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

Each chapter is arranged in two parts: a general discussion of 
the subject and a Bible study. The studies can be used for 
group or class discussions by leaders in Sunday-schools and 
Christian associations or by college students. The "Refer- 
ences for Reading" in the Appendix will furnish supplemental 
material for the use of group leaders. 

The writer is keenly conscious of her limitations in attempt- 
ing to interpret the significance of a Christian life; but there 
are too many unshepherded folk in this time of world distress, 
and any bit of experience that might help one of the least of 
them must not be withheld. / 

B. C. 
New York City, 

July 31, 1917. 



CONTENTS 

THE CHALLENGE TO SERVICE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Socializing My Faith 1 

II. Motives That Test 12 

III. Some Essential Convictions 19 

IV. Preparation for Service 28 

GUIDING PRINCIPLES 

V. Some Laws That Condition Mental Reactions ... 36 

VI. The Development op a Normal Christian Experience 45 

VII. The Oneness of Spirit, Mind, and Body 53 

VIII. Requisite Conditions for Spiritual Comradeship . . 60 

IX. Releasing Spiritual Energy 68 

THE APPLICATION OF THESE PRINCIPLES TO TYPES OF 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

X. The Problem of the Nominal Christian 75 

XI. The Approach to the Non-Christian 85 

XII. The Approach to Those Who Have Intellectual Dif- 
ficulties 94 

XIII. The Approach to Those Who Are Fighting Besetting 

Sins 105 

ix 



x CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. The Approach to Those Who Face Problems of Con- 
duct 115 

XV. The Approach to Those Who Live an Unbalanced 

Life 126 

XVI. The Approach to Those Who Are Feeling After 

Reality 132 

XVII. Developing the Religious Life of Children .... 138 

XVIII. The Sources of Growth 146 

XIX. The Perils of Success 152 

References for Reading 159 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN 
THE MAKING OF A CHRISTIAN 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE 
MAKING OF A CHRISTIAN 

CHAPTER I 
SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 

"The one thing of which I am sure these days," said a 
thoughtful man, "is that I am not sure of anything. I want 
something real, something that will show this mad world how 
to get a grip on something solid." "How about God?" asked 
his friend. " He is real to some of us." " Well, if He is, why 
don't all of you begin to make Him real to the rest of us ? He 
can't be very real to most Christians or they wouldn't succeed 
so well in keeping Him out of all their conversation. If any 
one has help, this is the time of all times to give it." The ring 
of this challenge might well drive us to self-examination. It 
brings forth in sharp outline the contrast between our usual 
attitude toward the inarticulate longings of people and that 
of Jesus Christ. His intense interest in their spiritual needs is 
so unlike the dull apathy that most Christians show. How 
can we be sure that we are Christians when we are so far from 
possessing His spirit toward others? For "when He saw the 
multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because 
they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shep- 
herd. Then saith He unto His disciples, ' The harvest indeed is 
plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the 
Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his har- 
vest' " (Matt. 9 : 37, 38). 

The harvest is even whiter now. The fact that three-fouTths 
of the civilized world are in deadly combat after nineteen cen- 
turies of Christian teaching has filled our minds with questions 
and upset our theories. We Christians, though dazed, feel 

1 



2 SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 

that some reply must be made to those who are saying quite 
frankly, "What is Christianity worth ?" "Where is thy God?" 
for one hears this on all sides. The world is ready to talk about 
Him as never before. 

We are faced, too, by frank questions about our social re- 
lationships. The world is becoming quite sure that the existing 
community conditions and their inherent injustices are ob- 
stacles that must and can be removed so that people if they 
want to can know God. The Christian conscience is becom- 
ing sensitive to social needs and is exacting a higher standard 
for a Christian life. People are hoping that some one will tell 
them how to use this social spirit in the creation of a social 
programme that will build up the kingdom of Jesus Christ on 
sure foundations. They are sure that He is related to it all in 
some way and they are ready to have His help and talk over 
His programme with any one who sees it from His point of view. 
We say to ourselves that it is chiefly a matter of education; 
that people need to be taught the ethical principles of Jesus 
Christ and the laws of social adjustment, and that a well- 
ordered community life based on justice and co-operation will 
solve our problems. Well, education is certainly doing a great 
deal and pointing the way so clearly that people are forced to 
own to their sins of omission. We see illustrations of this all 
about us. Recently a prominent manufacturer who had ex- 
ploited the labor of children to swell his profits and had been 
for years the devout and respected church leader in his town 
and its philanthropies suddenly lost his religious influence in 
the community when people began to learn their social re- 
sponsibility toward all little ones and began to apply the stand- 
ards of Jesus Christ to the situation. The light of publicity 
is being thrown on unsanitary housing, sweat-shop conditions, 
and other social evils, and those who are responsible for them 
are either correcting them or concealing their connection with 
them. 

We can plead ignorance no longer and we are face to face 
with a need for such moral decision of character as will purge 
us from our social sin. Responsibility is being located in the 
human will, and if we fail there we are in open disobedience 
to the light. The real social problem that we Christians have 
to face is found in the age-long fact that people know the good 
and do it not. Why is this so ? Why does a man drink when 



SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 3 

he knows it ruins him? Why does a girl take coffee at ten 
o'clock at night when she knows she will lose a night's sleep ? 
Why does a man allow foul drains to exist in a house he owns 
when he knows that the little children living there may die of 
typhoid ? There are some, also, who see the beauty of a Chris- 
tian life of fellowship with God and yet are unwilling to pay 
the price in order to have it themselves. 

That was a revealing sentence in the leading address at a 
conference of social workers: "After the minimum-wage law 
has been passed, after the child-labor laws have been enacted, 
there yet remain the souls of people/' It is a quiet admission 
that more than law is needful; the inner desires and choices 
of people's hearts must direct the will toward the enforcement 
of the law. It is the lesson of the Old Testament which the 
prophets discerned. The laws of God must be written in the 
hearts of people before they will become effective. Yes, indeed, 
all our social justice for which we ought to fight is only one 
part of the work; "there yet remain the souls of people" who 
know the good and do it not, who must be touched not alone 
by the precise counsels of education but who must catch the 
contagion of Christian character from association with those 
whose "character," as John Stuart Mill says, "is a perfectly 
fashioned will," one which does always those things that please 
God 

It is a big task that we have been given, with two distinct parts : 
to turn the calcium-light of God's righteousness upon all the 
conditions of our day until people see what He wants, and see 
too, how miserably far short of His expectation we have come 
in doing what we want at the expense of others; then to lead 
people to want and to will what God wants and wills by draw- 
ing near to them in love and sharing with them our relation- 
ship with Him until they cannot resist the appeal of His love. 
When this is done we must then link ourselves with all who will 
to apply our united will to the bringing in of God's kingdom. 

This kind of work cannot be done through books or laws 
alone, any more than a little child can be educated apart from 
association with personalities that have had more experience 
with life and its meanings. It must be by example, or, as the 
small boy once put it: "Our teacher teaches us boys to be 
polite." "How does She do it?" asked his mother. "Oh, I 
don't know, She just walks around — and we feel as polite as 



4 SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 

anything." Thus it is that our great gift to our generation is 
that we be what we ought to be and bring others in touch 
with the source of our life and victory. 

We know that the chief source of our life is the reality of 
God as we come to know Him in Jesus Christ, who gives us 
the power to be and to do what we ought to be and to do. We 
know that all society needs this power to create new desires in 
the heart and give a new moral drive to the will. This can 
only be achieved when we begin to socialize our faith and to 
share it, for multitudes of people will never come to know God 
unless they find Him with our personal help. Many of them 
question the efficiency of the church because the social upheavals 
have seemed to contradict her voice. They do not know where 
to turn for help if we who rub elbows with them in the jostle 
of business and social life are silent. We dare not fail them 
when the meaning of the word Christian is being redefined by 
common consent with a new accent on social relationships. 
This voice of the people calls attention to our daily living and 
invites a close scrutiny. The gospel of a life is the only Bible 
many people will ever read. The masses of people are more in- 
fluenced in their attitude toward God as He is seen through the 
ordinary manifestations of Christianity by the spirit and walk 
of us who are their friends than by any other means. Of course 
if we have no conscious ideals of the Christian life that are 
worth sharing, they will soon find us out; but if we really have 
them they will want them, and we would be unworthy, indeed, 
if we were smugly selfish about them. We have our great op- 
portunity to give our best, sure that some wistful-eyed folk will 
turn to us to listen. 

Surely some very human prophets are needed to-day; some 
who can give voice to the stifled convictions of people and in- 
terpret them in the light of the true character of God, Who is 
adequate for all that the human heart and society craves. 
As we try to think it through there are four elemental needs in 
human life to-day: 

(1) The need of a vision, "Where there is no vision/' the 
proverb runs, " the people perish." It is all too true. We live 
and grow by our visions; dreams, that call out our pluck and 
will to make them real. A girl dreams of herself as a college 
woman, and she buckles down to her elementary studies with 
a vim that makes the dream come true. A man dreams of a 



SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 5 

little home with wife and children, and he plods along in his 
business and makes of himself a man worthy to support a 
home. The girl has her vision because she has seen a college 
girl the personification of her ideal; the man has seen a home 
and the ideal lures him on. The latent powers of each are 
called out by the concrete vision. So it is with the spiritual 
life. People "feel," as the poet says, "a Presence that dis- 
turbs" and they have all sorts of ideas about God. They may 
know the historical facts of the life of Jesus Christ or they may 
not. At any rate, if they do know about Him, it is as a dim tale 
of some one who because He walked the earth long ago is totally 
unrelated to the twentieth century. They need a vision of 
Him now in this day that is only possible when God is allowed 
to live in us by His Spirit and use us as the embodiment of His 
truth and love until people see Him incarnate in terms of hu- 
man life that they can understand. In other words, God must 
become personal to them. The church and her religious teach- 
ing seem so impersonal to the multitudes; they need to be 
mediated to them through the life of some person, "1 would 
give anything I possess to have a faith in God like yours/' 
said a long-time unbeliever to a Christian friend, " I've always 
known what the Bible says about it, but I never saw any one 
before who had the nerve to live it. You've given my thinking 
a jolt." People to-day need many jolts like that; if they see 
the vision of God in a life they will find it hard to resist. 

(2) The need for sympathy and companionship in suffering and 
the restoration of the life marred by mistakes* One of the big 
burdens that people carry is the load of loneliness that be- 
comes too bitter to be borne when the fact of sorrow and suf- 
fering presses close. To suffer and to be alone in it with no 
understanding friend near by brings despair. What a poor 
appeal we could make to most people in the world to-day if we 
could not bring to them a living Lord who is " touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities" and who shares our sufferings. The 
value of suffering is one of the big mysteries of life; but it is an 
unescapable fact which does not cease to be even though we 
ignore it or deny it or run away from it. Without it some of 
the richest gifts of experience and character are lost. Chief 
among these is the sense of God's intimate understanding that 
humbles us with wonder that He should care about all we feel, 
suffer with us, and give His strength and help. There are 



6 SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 

thousands about us who have not this comfort. They are 
haunted by the cry of their hearts: 

"What can it mean? Is it aught to Him 
That the nights are long and the days are dim? 
Can He be touched by the griefs I bear, 
Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair? 
Around His throne are eternal calms, 
And strong glad music of happy psalms, 
And bliss unruffled by any strife; 
How can He care for my little life? 

"When shadows hang o'er me the whole day long, 
And my spirit is bowed with shame and wrong; 
When I am not good and the deeper shade 
Of conscious sin makes my heart afraid, 
And the busy world has too much to do 
To stay in its course to help me through, 
And I long for a Saviour, — can it be 
That the God of the universe cares for me?" 

The wonderful truth that God as we see Him in Jesus Christ 
identifies himself with the struggle and pain of this world is 
what people need to see more clearly. They need the comfort 
and courage that comes from the realization that they do not 
walk alone, bearing the brunt of the consequences of their 
mortality, but that God himself is under the burden. Now, 
how shall people see this and find their understanding Father 
unless those who live in His Spirit get under the burdens of 
people with love and sympathy and courage. "Hereby per- 
ceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: 
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (I John 
3 : 16). 

It is not a system of ethics that people need so much as an 
understanding friend through whom they come to know the 
very heart of God. We need to confess our sin of pride and 
fastidiousness that has made us shun the pain of others and 
shirk our duty to give our strength to their weakness. People 
will never come to know their heavenly Father until they see 
Him walking the streets in the temple of our bodies, minister- 
ing to those sick, and in prison, and naked and hungry. Has 
our Christian life ever cost us inconvenience, suffering, and 
sacrifice for others? How far are we willing to enter vicari- 
ously into the "fellowship of His sufferings ,, ? 



SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 7 

"Lead me, yea, lead me deeper into life, 
This suffering, human life wherein Thou UVst 
And breafchest still, and holdst thy way divine. 
'Tis here, O pitying Christ, where thee I seek, 
Here where the strife is fiercest; where the sun 
Beats down upon the highway thronged with men, 
And in the raging mart, O ! deeper lead 
My soul into the living world of souls 
Where Thou dost move." 

(Richard Watson Gilder.) 

But it is not only help in pain that people need in order to 
see the Father but the restoration of fellowship with Him as 
their Redeemer from sin. If there were no way in which God 
could restore the spirit of people who suffer because of their 
sin or the sin of others, and heal the open sore that blights 
humanity, all our efforts at social reform would be futile. 
Back of every social problem lies the fact of sin and the active 
energy of sin; back of all unbrotherliness there is sin. It is 
the age-long, ugly fact with which we have to reckon. What 
good will it do to keep cleaning the basin of the fountain so 
long as the filth comes pouring out from the waters. We must 
get at the source and find our true help. In other words, the 
continuous attitude of the loving God, which was once revealed 
in the historic fact of Jesus Christ on His cross, must be so 
brought home to the hearts of people that they will hate sin 
as He hated it. As He refrained from no cost to cure it, so 
those who sin will find His healing and be restored to a friend- 
ship with God, forgiven and cleansed. People can read rules 
of ethics and be taught ideals but they can only see and re- 
ceive the truth of the cross of Christ as it is ministered to them 
through those of us who carry the marks of the Lord Jesus in 
humble hearts and can speak out of a full experience to those 
who need a Redeemer. And from the streams of living water 
that flow out from a cleansed heart the mire and filth of this 
world will be washed away. If we were finding honestly, for 
ourselves, the restoring power of God by letting Him deal with 
our sin we would find some of the same spirit burning in us 
that set Paul on fire whom Myers so truly depicts in his lines: 

"Oft when the Word is on me to deliver 
Lifts the illusion and the truth lies bare, 
Desert or mountain, the city or the river 
Melts in a lucid paradise of air. 



8 SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 

Only like souls I see the folk thereunder 

Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings, 

Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, 

Sadly contented with the show of things. 

Then with a rush the intolerable craving 

Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call, 

Oh, to save these ! to perish for their saving ! 

Die for their life, be offered for them all!" 

(3) The need for a love that will make the dream of brotherhood 
a tangible reality. We all talk about the love of God and yet 
take pride in being most exclusive in our love toward others. 
We look at it so often as a personal luxury to be used only when 
a fortuitous combination of circumstances proves irresistible. 
We are so satisfied with a few understanding spirits and fail 
utterly to appreciate multitudes of others because we are blind 
and stupid and only half-awake. Professor William James 
speaks of the "great cloud-bank of ancestral blindness weigh- 
ing down upon us, only transiently riven here and there by 
fitful revelations of the truth"; and he shows how this blind- 
ness keeps us from discerning the possibility of the ideal life 
in other people. It is all true. Most of us are so limited in 
our insight into the true nature of others that we go on through 
life appreciating only a few of the personalities we meet. In- 
deed, we are so blind to the inner life of people that we often 
are surprised to discover that certain persons should have any 
friends at all, and say to ourselves: "I cannot see what any one 
can find to satisfy himself in that individual." It is our blind- 
ness and stupidity that keeps us from realizing people as they 
are, and it is fortunate, indeed, for us all that there are some 
friends keener than we are who respond to us and appreciate 
what is hidden in us. There are certain people who have a 
great capacity for friendship, merely because they are open- 
eyed enough to see the beauty of personality and to delight in 
it. Such people get the most out of life. 

Love never hurts any one and it is God's own medium for 
understanding Him and bringing others nearer to Him. The 
bonds of brotherhood are real when people are bound together 
by common experiences and trials, but they never are severed 
if they are knit together by love. Love not only helps us to 
realize the inner ideal and dignity of all other people but is 
the active creative force that calls out latent powers and 



SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 9 

transforms discord into harmony. The more the vision of 
God in Jesus Christ holds the attention and the more real be- 
comes the sense of God's forgiveness and friendship, the easier 
will it be to look at others with the active spirit of love in- 
stead of stodgy indifference. In this way we gain stature in 
personality and find our largest life and call out others also 
into fulness of life. 

The ideal of Christian brotherhood which Jesus Christ holds 
up is nothing short of the perfect bond. " And this is my com- 
mandment that ye love one another, as I" have loved you." Are 
we willing to socialize not only our faith but our love to this 
extent ? 

(4) The need for some moral dynamic in order that social ideals 
may be worked out. We have not been slow about sharing our 
social ideals. We have socialized our working laws of hygiene, 
we have socialized our ideals for the relation of capital and 
labor, for recreation and education, suffrage and social moral- 
ity. But in it all we have kept to ourselves the only thing 
that will make any of these ideals personal and potent. We 
have not socialized our faith in our living God revealed through 
Jesus Christ. We have researched the valley of dry bones, 
like the prophet of old, and brought together through the or- 
dered ways of social laws and organizations bone to bone until 
out of the chaotic mass a mighty army for social betterment 
takes shape. We have done all that human wisdom can do, 
but the army is still inert; it needs the breath of God that it 
may arise and live and do. If only we could make the con- 
nection between sharing our faith and sharing our ideals! 
It is here that we Christians fail so pitifully. Some of us go 
out armed with ideals, some of us with faith. We all fail be- 
cause we are not completely furnished. Those who preach 
social ideals fail to give a permanent motive power to the will, 
which alone can come from a vital Christian faith; those who 
preach faith often lack the laboratory work that would show 
people the application of the ideal. If only God would open 
our eyes to see our need until we should see the whole truth ! 
All that we have done is right, but we must not leave the other 
undone. Let us socialize our ideals and socialize our working 
faith in God until we shall not need to say: "Know Jehovah, 
for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the 
greatest of them, saith Jehovah" (Jer. 31 : 34). 



10 SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 

BIBLE STUDY I 
Sharing Our Christian Convictions. — A Natural Service 

I. The interdependence of our individual life and the life of society. 
Read Isaiah 58 : 1-12. Note in detail the marks of formalism and self- 

centredness in the verses 2-4 — a reluctant conforming to some supposed 
requirement of God for which they expect merit and reward; not a co- 
operation with His purposes for His children. Verses 6-11. Write down 
the programme of service that God desires carried out. In what ways would 
it involve us in a living sacrifice? Note the force of the word "Then" 
in verse 8 and verse 10. What are the spiritual rewards promised in 
verses 8-11? Is there any inherent reason why these rewards cannot be 
ours apart from society? How is our own human destiny dependent on 
our earning these rewards? 

II. Sharing our convictions — an inevitable service for every true Christian. 
Read Acts 4 : 18-20. The heart naturally expresses what it really 

experiences. In view of this, what is the natural inference when we are 
silent? Some Bible illustrations of this law: 

(1) Water, — John 7 : 37, 38. How does a river differ from a pool? 

What is the result when we dam a river? 

(2) Fire. — Luke 11 : 33. Note the significance of the words "That 

they which enter in may see the light." What happens to a light 
when it is hidden under a bushel? How does the experience of 
Jeremiah confirm this? See Jer. 20 : 9. 

(3) Branch. — John 15 : 5. Consider the solemn warning of our Lord 

in verse 6 — the penalty of a fruitless life. 

(4) Friendship. — John 15 : 27. What are the obligations of friend- 

ship? Why do we depend upon our friends to interpret us to 
others? I John 3 : 16, 17. A friend in need compels love and 
sacrifice. Laying down our life is often letting our life be where 
we do not want it to be. 
In the light of these illustrations read Matt. 12 : 34. 

III. The gospel of Jesus Christ — a social gospel. 

Read I John 1 : 3 as a statement of the objective of the spiritual revela- 
tion — the "noblesse oblige" of the gospel. 

Read John 17 : 19. What are the strongest motives that lead us to 
seek personal regeneration? 

If "character is caught and not taught," what is the importance of 
Paul's advice to Timothy in I Tim. 4 : 12, 15, 16 ? How many of the 
virtues in verse 12 are social in their implication? Verse 14. Each has 
his own gift; we are not asked to do what some one with other gifts has 
done, but to use the gift that is in us. 

Read Psalm 67. What motives does the Psalmist urge as a reason 
why God should give a personal blessing? 

Whether we do it consciously or not, we are interpreting our conception 
of God to one another each day, through the many relationships we have 
in business and society, making it easier or more difficult for each of us 



SOCIALIZING MY FAITH 11 

to realize our heavenly Father. We cannot detach the spiritual from the 
human or the individual from the group. Is there any one in the group 
of those who minister to my life who finds it harder to love God because of 
me? See Matt. 23 : 13. In what concrete ways do we hinder those who 
are trying to enter into the kingdom? 

"We must be here to work; 
And men who work, can only work for men, 
And, not to work in vain, must comprehend 
Humanity, and, so, work humanly, 
And raise men's bodies still by raising souls, 
As God did, first. 

" 'But stand upon the earth/ 
I said, 'to raise them — (this is human, too; 
There's nothing high which has not first been low; 
My humbleness, said One, has made Me great !) 
As God did, last.' 

" 'And work all silently, 
And simply/ he returned, 'as God does all; 
Distort our nature never, for our work, 
Nor count our right hands stronger for being hoofs. 
The man most man, with tenderest human hands, 
Works best for men, — as God in Nazareth/ " 

(Mrs. E. B. Browning.) 



CHAPTER II 
MOTIVES THAT TEST 

Most of us find it easy to say "yes" with our minds to the 
need for socializing our faith, but we are reluctant to focus our 
powers upon this as our supreme personal privilege. There 
may lurk in our minds the question as old as time, " Am I my 
brother's keeper?" or, to put it more explicitly, "Am I re- 
sponsible for what my friend thinks concerning God and 
Christ and life?" Our imagination needs to be filled by some- 
thing that will supply motive power to our wills and start us 
on our task. It is well, therefore, to face some of the facts 
about ourselves that should lead us to begin to share our gift 
of life with others. The following motives have sufficed to 
start others; do they suffice for you? 

A fine sense of honor in discharging the great debt we owe to 
others who in the past have been faithful to our personal need. 
How can we repay our Christian forebears, the church, our 
mothers and fathers and friends? By them our hearts were 
kept tender toward God and from them came the sources of 
our knowledge of Him and of our strength of character. The 
light that came to us in our spiritual struggles was born of 
the sympathetic love of God, usually voiced by some Chris- 
tian friend. We can only repay the debt by thinking of it 
as a loan to be passed on to others who need the same help. 
How could we have met the crises of our lives without this 
help from others ! Our real gratitude is measured by the way 
we share our greatest gift ! 

The reasonable expectation of those who are in spiritual fog and 
darkness and who know that we have had experience in finding 
the way. It is a serious matter to fail a friend in need. A 
Christian student in an eastern college had as a close friend a 
girl from a non-Christian home. In all their friendly conver- 
sations during four years no word was spoken concerning God 
and the personal relationship to Christ. Three years after 

12 



MOTIVES THAT TEST 13 

graduation/ in reply to a letter written out of sympathy for the 
loss of her mother, the non-Christian friend said: "Why didn't 
you tell me about the possibility of knowing God before? I 
used to long to have you speak to me when at college, but I 
did not open my heart, for it was so dark and full of fear. I 
thought your attitude toward God must be temperamental and 
not for me else surely you would have helped me to find Him. 
You know how hard my life has been. Why didn't you tell 
me this before?" It is not unlikely that some one near us, 
whom we least suspect, is thinking similar thoughts about us. 

"Last night, oh, friend of mine, unto your door 
With wearied soul and heart most sore 
I came to cry your comforting — and you 
Gave me light words, light praise, your jester's due; 
I shall not come for comfort any more. 

"Take you my laughter since you love it so— 
The little jests men juggle to and fro; 
I did not guess how much I came to ask 
Your solace for a heart you do not know." 

(Theodosia Garrison.) 

The preservation of one's own spiritual life which demands ac- 
tion and expression. The blessings of God stream into our life 
from countless channels. We are the terminal, and a terminal 
is temporarily a storehouse that it may be constantly a dis- 
tributing centre. We are so made that we cannot live even 
our own inner life to ourselves. It is only real as it is shared 
and expressed in action. If we try to hug to ourselves our 
inner desires and impulses we soon cease to have them. They 
die because they are unsatisfied. If a light is hidden under a 
bushel it either burns up the bushel or goes out. If we are 
moved by the spirit of love we must find some one to love or 
we lose it. Love is impossible without a relationship. It is a 
social force. It was inevitable that a God of love should give 
His Son to express His heart in terms that we could understand; 
in like manner we, too, love only as we give expression to it. 
Perhaps some of us are suffering from spiritual atrophy just 
because we have succeeded so well in restraining all healthy 
expression of our Christian life. We need to fear lest we lose 
our gift of life just because we hide it away as did the man in 
the parable who had his talent taken away from him. 



14 MOTIVES THAT TEST 

The potential value of one life when controlled by Christ 
Those of us who have the teacher instinct are more likely to 
be moved by this thought than others. No one can estimate 
the power of a single life when all its energies are released for 
the kingdom of God. One has only to recall the biographies 
of men like David Livingstone, Chinese Gordon, Phillips Brooks, 
Florence Nightingale, Madame Guyon, Isabella Thoburn, D. 
L. Moody, and college men like Forbes Robinson, Hugh Beaver, 
and Horace Rose, as well as countless living examples, to realize 
how important one redeemed life may be for the far-reaching 
purposes of God. Possibly a larger proportion of potential 
leadership is to be found in the colleges of the world than else- 
where. If so, the winning of a student to a Christ-controlled 
life should be of compelling importance. 

We never know whom we are touching, and the most insig- 
nificant boy or girl may play an important part in the world's 
service. It may be that an incidental touch that we may have 
with that life in the name of Christ will be the most important 
part of our life's work. Therefore we may well take heed that 
we do not miss our opportunity, through lack of readiness 
to help, in releasing the spiritual possibilities of even one 
life. 

The command of Christ and its unmistakable appeal to loyal 
disciples. The Christian has pledged obedience to the will of 
God and the will of God is expressed in the purpose of Christ: 
"I am come that they may have life, and may have it abun- 
dantly " (John 10 : 10). The application of this purpose to 
the friends of Christ is made very plain in His words spoken 
after His resurrection: "Peace be unto you: as the Father hath 
sent me even so send I you." If those humble fisherfolk had 
gone back to their fishing and had not taken this command of 
Christ literally, we, like our ancestors, might yet have been danc- 
ing round Druid altars. Fortunate it is for us that Christ's faith 
in the faithfulness of His friends was not disappointed, but 
that they did just as He told them and began to share the 
knowledge of Him with friends and foes alike; for we are the 
inheritors of all the blessings and knowledge. The same com- 
mands are as binding on us as they were on the first friends of 
Christ, and we, too, can only show our love and loyalty to Him 
by obeying them. This ought to supply sufficient motive for 
a life of service. 



MOTIVES THAT TEST 15 

The spirit of ambition and the lorn of conquest. There is some- 
thing in each one of us that longs to achieve, to overcome, to 
subdue. The "fighting quality" in our natures is God-given, 
and without it progress is impossible. Multitudes of people 
fight for money, fame, or social position, counting no sacrifice 
too great. This energy of ambition saps the strength and 
peace of mind of a person merely because it is directed to ends 
that are selfish and material. If the same force were directed 
toward the bringing in of the kingdom of our Lord in this 
world and in the hearts of people it would be a great tonic and 
would call into play all our latent powers. Professor James 
suggests that this world needs more than anything else "the 
moral equivalent of war." Could this not be found if we should 
fix our ambitions on the lifelong war that must be waged for 
character in ourselves and in others who need our help ? 

"No, when the fight begins within himself, 
A man's worth something, God stoops o'er his hand, 
Satan looks up between his feet, — both tug — 
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes 
And grows. Prolong that battle through this life ! 
Never leave growing till the life to come." 

{Robert Browning.) 

The need of the Christless world. This need cannot be fully 
realized by us because it has never been a fact of our experi- 
ence. Many Christians can recall the intense hunger, loneli- 
ness, and despair of the days when they were seeking a living 
Saviour and friend. But the students of the Occident cannot 
appreciate the state of a people who have no hunger because 
they have not had food; whose loneliness is all the more bitter 
because they have never been lightened by hope. Now and 
then we are given a glimpse into a heart that should call forth 
our compassion and compel our help. Some years ago the 
Baltimore Sun published a letter written December, 1890, by 
a well-known senator to his wife. In it he writes as follows: 
" What an uncivil host life is, to invite us to an entertainment 
which we are compelled to attend whether we like it or not, 
and then unceremoniously to take us by the arm and bow us 
out into the night, stormy and dismal, to go stumbling about 
without so much as a lantern to show us the way to another 
town — " When one realizes that darkness and uncertainty 



16 MOTIVES THAT TEST 

abide in every heart that has no living relationship with Christ, 
the common bond of humanity should compel one to make any 
sacrifice of time and effort to relate a life to the Christ who 
said: "I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me shall 
not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life" (John 
8 : 12). 

Doctor A. J. Gordon once said: "I used to pray often, 'Lord, 
have compassion on a lost world/ At last He said to me: 'I 
have had compassion; it is now for you to have compassion — 
I gave my heart, give yours/ " 

The expectant love of Christ This motive will make its 
strongest appeal to those who are in sincere and sympathetic 
partnership with Christ in redeeming lives. The strength of 
the appeal is measured by one's fidelity to the life of friendship 
with Christ. One dare not fail the expectant love of such a 
friend. The sweetness of all communion with God is con- 
ditioned by the depth of our appreciation of the great pur- 
poses of His heart and the work in which He is most deeply 
interested. Surely that is centred around the eternal good of 
His children over whom He watches constantly and to whom 
He speaks through other children who have caught a little 
more of His spirit and who have the strength, if they will use 
it, to help His little ones to know Him better. It is in our 
power to release or restrain the life-giving voice of God in this 
world. If we want to hear it for ourselves we can scarcely 
dare to deprive any other child who will hear it best only when 
voiced through us. 

The contagious spirit of joy. People were meant to have joy 
in life. God has done His part in providing a world of beauty, 
in creating the infinite variety of human personalities, and in 
giving us all a capacity for living joyously; and yet in spite 
of God's purpose for His children there is unhappiness and 
discontent everywhere. This is the tragedy of life. Of course, 
we may shut our eyes to it and refuse to see or think of any- 
thing that is not joyous and beautiful, but we cannot get close 
to many people and share their life without facing the fact of 
sorrow and pain. Most of the sharpness of it comes from a 
sense of loneliness and misunderstanding. If people could only 
see their loving heavenly Father guiding, sympathizing, and 
loving them, a deep joy would enter in that would of itself be 
a great healing force. Some of us love people so well that we 



MOTIVES THAT TEST 17 

want them to have joy and gladness of heart — a joy that cir- 
cumstances cannot alter. We have this gift of joy in our hands 
because we know our Father and are sure of His love, and we 
can reassure others of His love for them and restore their joy. 
There is no joy in life like bringing joy to others. We all want 
it above all things, therefore no price is too great to pay for it 
— especially when it is what God desires for His children. 



BIBLE STUDY II 

The Claim op Christ's Call 

I. The claim of simple loyalty to the personal relation we have with Christ. 
See Matt. 10 : 32. Every true relationship is dependent on loyalty. 

This teaching is not an arbitrary statement but the inevitable situation 
that exists in every true relationship. If one friend is loyal and the 
other is not, can there be any real relationship ? In the light of this, what 
is our obligation to confess our loyalty to Christ? 

Read Phil. 1 : 20. What is the usual cause of our disloyalty to our re- 
lationship with Christ? What did it cost our Lord to be loyal to us? 
Can we accept the natural inference of Matt. 10 : 24, 25 ? 

II. The claim of the kingdom which can only he set up with the co-operation 

of the citizens of the kingdom. 
Read Matt. 28 : 19, 20. On what does the promise of Christ's presence 
depend? Why is it that our personal sense of His power and presence is 
conditioned by the claims of His kingdom? 

III. The claim of Christ 1 s ambition that we should share His glory. 

Read John 17 : 18 and John 20 : 21. What is the measure of the "even 
so"? How does that challenge our wills? What concrete service does 
it involve? See John 15 : 16, 17. Jesus Christ chose us to do His work 
and we are not presumptuous when we undertake to do it. When we 
begin to obey this call we transform our ideal of life from a series of un- 
related acts to a continuous purpose where "all things work together for 
good" and abide even unto eternity. 

IV. The challenge of Christ's example. 

See Matt. 9 : 36-38. What do we usually see in a multitude? How 
is a spirit of compassion developed in any one? How does the teaching 
of verse 38 take for granted that we, too, will have the same spirit and 
sense of responsibility that Jesus had? 

See Matt. 10 : 24, 25 and John 13 : 14-17. What are the inferences if 
we do not accept these challenges? Identification of life with our Lord 
always implies identification of purpose and work. 

V. The claim of a possible task — even humanly possible — therefore we are 

without excuse. 
Read Matt. 25 and Matt. 10 : 42. How may we give personal service 
to Christ now? Why are the righteous surprised (verse 37) at the words 



18 MOTIVES THAT TEST 

of Christ in verses 35 and 36? It is possible for every one to do as unto 
God the countless acts of service to our fellow men. Every relationship 
thus becomes a sacrament — a symbol of our desires toward God. 

If all these challenges are reasonable then we need to heed Rev. 22 : 17 
as the will of God for us: "He that heareth, let him say Come!" 

"The night lies dark upon the earth, and we have light, 
So many grope their way, and we have sight. 
One faith is theirs and ours, of sin and care, 
But we are borne along, while they their burden bear. 
Footsore, heart-weary, faint they on the way, 
Mute in their sorrow, while we kneel and pray. 

Father, why is it that these millions roam, 

And guess that that is Home, and urge their way. 

Is it enough to keep the door ajar that they may come and pray?" 



CHAPTER III 
SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 

If the case has been made clear in the preceding chapters, 
and we are morally honest, we have come to the point where 
we are awake to our duty and want to do it. We may feel as 
helpless as children but we do not mean to shirk. We want to 
begin to think straight and to learn how to do our duty. 

We ourselves need transformation before we can help others. 
Certain elemental truths must begin to work anew in our 
hearts and be real to us. In writing to the Romans Paul says: 
" Be transformed by the entire renewal of your minds, so that you 
may learn by experience what God's will is, that will which is 
good and beautiful and perfect" (Romans 12 : 2, Weymouth 
translation), and he here tells us the secret. Our transforma- 
tion depends on certain convictions of mind which give us 
courage to face our task and lead us out into God's will. Some 
of these convictions are already axioms in our experience, but 
have ceased to hold our attention because they are taken for 
granted. Let us look at some of these attitudes of mind, for 
we must hold to them steadily if we are naturally to find our- 
selves in the midst of opportunities for service. We may well 
let our imagination take hold of them until we are under the 
spell of them and shape our conduct by them. 

The first of these is the fact that God is infinitely eager to get 
points of contact with the hearts of His children. He is waiting 
to illumine the heart that will open to Him with even more 
certainty than is the summer sun to flood a room with light 
when the curtains are raised. Now there are many of us who 
do not really believe this; if we did, we would be more eager to 
help uplift the curtains from sordid or blind hearts. We are 
more likely to wonder why God allows so many to live in 
darkness rather than to wonder why, when the sun is shining, 
we should be so stupid as not to knock at other people's doors 
and tell them to lift up the curtains. 

19 



20 SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 

"Ah, what a web 
Of gray inconsequential-seeming threads ! 
The modish thoughts, the meat and money thoughts — 
In webs, in webs, in iron curtains proof 
Against whatever fires of poesy 
Burn in white aspirations from our lives, 
They hang between us and your inner eyes, 
Those better eyes, the pure eyes of the soul. 

?' Lift up the curtain: For an hour lift up 
The veil that holds you prisoners in this world 
Of coins and wines and motor-horns, this world 
Of figures and of men who trust in facts 
This pitiable, hypocritic world 
Where men with blinkered eyes and hobbled feet 
Grope down a narrow gorge and call it life." 

{The Heart of Youth, Herman Hagedorn.) 

In other words, our task is to remind people of the sun- 
shine and persuade them to open the windows — the sunshine 
does the rest. Our share is incidental. God will make Him- 
self plain if once He gets access to a heart. We can count upon 
Him and His work; we only prepare the way for Him. It is 
the truth that is burning in the heart of our Lord when He says 
of His blind people: "How oft would I have gathered thee as 
a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would 
not." Oh, that we would feel the pathos of this enough to 
want to persuade the blinded, foolish people of to-day to come 
to Him I 

Another attitude of mind that we need is one of expectancy and 
alertness. We are so short-sighted in our vision and can see 
such a little way into the future that most of life comes to 
us full of unexpected happenings and experiences. We do 
believe that God is eager to get into the heart of every child 
of His and that He is behind all the changing scenes of life; 
but this implies that we ought to count upon the fact that no 
living beings are ever stationary but that they change ever, 
from bad to worse or from good to better. Therefore we can- 
not speak of any one as hopeless, for perhaps there may have 
been some experience yesterday which changed the whole 
point of view and which will make that unresponsive soul re- 
sponsive to-day. We generally get what we are looking for, 
and if we are expecting that our Lord will gain access to the 
heart of a friend, we at least shall be ready to hear the sound of 



SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 21 

His footsteps and prepare the way for His coming. We need 
to train ourselves in that aspect of faith to have, as Father Bull 
counsels, "that buoyant expectation of the improbable which 
refuses the dull estimates of common sense and joyfully ex- 
pects in the future what is not suggested by the experience of 
the past." And he adds: "When there is a childlike expecta- 
tion of the improbable, there will be the manifestation of God's 
saving power." This daily conviction will forever prevent our 
taking that Morris-chair attitude toward our friends, in which 
we sit back and look at life as an entertaining spectacle. We 
shall be on tiptoe eager to see in what new ways God will mani- 
fest Himself to people and how we can help them to see Him. 
"Therefore be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye think not 
the Son of Man cometh" (Matt. 24 : 44). 

Again, our experience in life ought to teach us the value of the 
incidental; we shall then have a greater reverence for little happen- 
ings. We all believe that God is back of this world of events; 
that, as Jesus said, " not a sparrow falls to the ground without 
your Father" — that nothing happens by chance or accident. 
Therefore, we never know when our most important oppor- 
tunity may come. The testimony of many people goes to 
show that some incidental meeting with a friend, when a simple 
question was asked or some unconscious loyalty to God was 
shown, has marked the turning-point in a life. That obscure 
disciple, Andrew, little suspected when he brought Peter to 
see Jesus that he was doing his greatest life-work that day, 
for how could he have foreseen the day when this same Peter 
would bring five thousand to bow before his Lord through one 
sermon ? Andrew never brought people to God by multitudes 
directly, but his life service was just as wonderful because he 
brought to Jesus the man who brought the multitudes. 

God only knows how many chances for great service come 
to us in disguise and are lost because we were looking for some- 
thing we thought truly great. A Christian girl at a summer 
hotel gathered three noisy children about her one Sunday 
afternoon and told them Bible stories by the lake, closing with 
the story of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. They were quiet but 
did not seem specially impressed. She had at least relieved 
the grown folk for an hour, she reflected. A week later a 
woman of wealth and social position wrote her a note and 
asked to see her. When they met she said: "I want to talk 



22 SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 

with you about God, for I know you know Him. My little 
nephew came to see me and told me about the wonderful 
stories you told him last Sunday. I am an unhappy woman 
and must find help somewhere." Help came and the woman 
was led to her Lord and to work for the kingdom of God. In 
the faithfulness to the noisy children came the great opportu- 
nity to bless multitudes. To all of us who are ready for service 
incidental opportunities will come, which in retrospect will be 
seen as little hinges on which some door swung into a new and 
undiscovered country. 

The zest of adventure is ever near us if we have the right 
perspective and will lead us to be more faithful in that which is 
least in order that we' may be trusted with that which is great. 
We should form the habit of asking ourselves constantly: 
"Why am I brought into touch with this person?" "What 
help am I to gain from this relationship, or what am I to give 
to it?" "Why, of all the people in the world, should this one 
have been brought near me to-day?" "What is my Father's 
purpose in it ? " There is nothing that will so keep the keen zest 
for life alive in us as keeping these questions ever in mind and 
watching for the answers. 

We need also to remind ourselves that we can only meet life with 
life. Personal service for others is not a bit of work that can 
be taken up or dropped as we please. It knows no time ele- 
ment. It must be an unvarying attitude of mind that brings 
the whole of one's life alongside of the whole need of another. 
It is often not the amount of precise counsel that will help, 
though that, too, may be necessary; it is rather the natural 
comradeship of a sincere and loyal friend who does not direct 
people to a distant point but who walks with them along the 
path showing the beauties of the way and helping them to avoid 
pitfalls. An impersonal precept may give us light and a cer- 
tain amount of wisdom — a guide-post does this — but it does 
not win our devotion or compel our wills until it comes to us 
incarnated in the life of some one who walks along with us. 
We have believed the truth of this, or at least we have thought 
we did, but we need to believe it so hard that we shall not go 
among human beings like a tortoise, ever carrying a shell and 
retreating within our shells at the first approach. How should 
we ever have known God if there ever had been times in the 
life of Jesus Christ when He was not transparently open and 



SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 23 

accessible to people ! It was all a part of the laying down of 
His life, and "He left us an example that we should follow in 
His steps." 

It is necessary also that we really believe that the relation of the 
spirit to its God is a fundamental interest in the life of every human 
being. We might as well take it for granted that people are 
interested in the things of the spiritual life even though they 
are not willing yet to admit this fact to any one. This is often 
due not so much to secretiveness as to the fact that nothing 
that they have seen in our lives measures up to the inner stand- 
ard which they believe to be Christian. Or they may not be 
appealed to by the way in which we express our interest in the 
religious life, or they may be outside the narrow conceptions 
which we ourselves may have of the word Christian. The 
world is full of people who are judged by Christians as non- 
Christian merely because they do not attach the same value 
to certain religious forms, or because they interpret the Scrip- 
tures differently from other people or emphasize a different 
set of virtues. There are those, too, who make no professions 
of faith and have never become open disciples of Jesus Christ 
because they honestly do not know the way and have never 
seen any one who cared enough about it, seemingly, to teach 
them, or they have been repelled because people assumed that 
they were not interested. "They all think Fm a thorough 
worldling here, therefore I don't want to disappoint them," a 
girl said gayly to a chance acquaintance. "I don't believe for 
one moment that you are," came the reply. "I'll warrant 
God is in your thoughts constantly." "You're right; He is," 
she said, "and sometimes I wish I knew how people come to 
know Him." The rest was simple. Because this stranger had 
taken it for granted that this girl, in common with all human- 
ity, had a thirst for God she was able to bring her into a living 
relationship with Him through a sincere sharing of what she 
knew through her own experience. No matter how thick the 
shell of conventionality and other interests may be, underneath 
there is a real life that really cares about knowing God. It 
is only those who can discern those hidden qualities of the 
spirit that earn the right to enter and have fellowship in the 
name of Christ. 

There is another axiom of the spiritual life that most of us 
have ceased to count upon except as a refuge in an emergency. 



24 SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 

It is that God is able to work in us, that His power "creates within 
us the desire to do His gracious will and also brings about the ac- 
complishment of the desire" (Phil. 2 : 13, Weymouth). The 
omnipotence of God seems rather a far-away fact than a pres- 
ent source of confidence. If we really believed that His power 
is available for the accomplishment of every holy desire, there 
would be no limit to what we might do in His name. We 
should then see that it is His power working in us that leads 
us to discern the heart of another who is feeling out to know 
Him, and we should recognize this as a sure sign that He would 
work in that life through us in response to intercession, and we 
should pray with all our hearts that if He had created in us 
this desire to help He would bring about its accomplishment 
in His own time and way. Then we would watch to see how 
it would come about, and we would find ourselves at last con- 
fronted by a natural opportunity to give the help we longed 
to give, and another life would find its Father through us. 
The trouble with us is that we do not recognize His work in us, 
creating desires and giving us power to discern our oppor- 
tunities. If we were to begin to count upon this principle as 
an unvarying certainty, we would then begin to use the resources 
of prayer and have our eyes made alert to see our opportunity. 
We need not pray for more opportunities but for the eyes to 
see them as they lie about us. God easily establishes natural 
connections between ourselves and others who need us when 
we are ready to be used. 

We also need to remember that the spiritual life does not grow 
through a conflict of human opinion about God and life, but by a 
conviction of heart that issues in a will to follow on in obedience. 
It is not necessary that any one of us should be able to answer 
satisfactorily all questions and explain all mysteries concern- 
ing God, but it is necessary that each of us should see something 
in the God revealed by Jesus Christ, that compels the love of 
our wills if not the love of our feelings and leads us to begin to 
obey Him and give over the control of our life. We thus meet 
the challenge of the words: "If any man willeth to do his 
will he shall know by the teaching whether I come from God 
or whether I speak from myself " (John 7 : 17). All the light 
of knowledge and experience takes new meaning as it is related 
to God as the centre of our orbit, and we grow in grace and in 
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ by the same processes 



SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 25 

with which we learned in school to know the world of facts. 
The chief business then was to secure the right teacher, then 
everything came as a matter of course. Thus it is with our 
knowledge of God. What we need and others need is to find 
the great Master Teacher and relate ourselves and our friends 
to Him in trust and obedience; then He works through our 
minds and hearts and guides us into all the truth by His Holy 
Spirit. 

The test comes just here. People are blind to God's Father- 
hood through ignorance or neglect, or they are so taken up 
with their own little experiments that they are content to 
follow their own wills, or they shrink from the discipline of the 
school of life. They need to be persuaded and lured on by the 
joyous comradeship of all of us who have already begun to 
enter into the joy of our Lord. It is not difficult to win other 
disciples if we are willing to share our experiences. Some of us 
know even now many who are thirsting for something, they 
know not what; are we ready to share with them our spiritual 
life from this time on? Saint Augustine once prayed in his 
time of struggle, before he had settled forever that God should 
control his life: "O God, give me chastity — but not now!" 
Perhaps we too are praying: "O God, give me the chance to 
help others to know Thee — but Fm not ready now !" If so, we 
might well not go on any farther until we can ask with all our 
heart: "O God, give me the chance to help others to know 
Thee — and I am ready now ! " 

BIBLE STUDY III 
A Picture of the Heart of God 

I. The seeking God, 

Read Ezek. 34 : 1-16. What is the conception of God as pictured by 
the prophet? How does His attitude toward the sheep differ from that 
of the shepherds of Israel? Describe the kinds of experiences the sheep 
were having which moved the heart of God their Shepherd. Notice the 
repetition of the word "my" and read Ezek. 34 : 31 in this connection, 
also Jer. 31 : 3. 

Why is it that people are so slow to believe that the heavenly Father is 
as He is described in this chapter ? What effect would it have on the hearts 
of people if they really grasped the truth about God's yearning, seeking 
love? If it is true that we belong to God as His own, what effect should 
it have on our daily attitude of mind? Read Psalm 23 for a picture of 
one who realized this truth. If any of His sheep have lost their way and 



26 SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 

turned their back on their Shepherd, where may we expect to find Him ? 
What is the only course open to a Shepherd who cares for the sheep as He 
does? 

II. God still seeking through Jesus Christ, 

Read John 10 : 1-18. Notice again the reiteration of the words "his 
own/' "mine own" in verses 3 and 14 and the challenge to the hireling 
"whose own the sheep are not." In verses 8 and 14 why is it that the 
sheep know the voice of the Shepherd rather than the voice of a robber ? 
Read verse 9 in the light of the solemn warning given by our Lord in Luke 
13 : 24. How may we be sure that we have entered the door? 

What experiences with God will the sheep have, according to this chap- 
ter, if they recognize and accept the ownership of their Shepherd Jesus 
Christ? Notice the outreach of the Shepherd's love in verse 16 and the 
intensity of His yearning in the words, "I must bring." 

How does the Shepherd earn the right to claim the sheep as His own in 
verse 11? 

True love must always meet the test of suffering vicariously on behalf of 
the loved one, or it is unworthy of the name. The picture of the heart of 
God as the Good Shepherd has forever defined love in its reality. 

III. The love of the Good Shepherd an individual personal love. 
Read Matt. 18 : 10-14 and Luke 15 : 1-10. 

Note: (1) The love of the Shepherd seeks the one that is lost before it 
wants to be found. (2) The love of the Shepherd knows no limit "until 
he find it." (3) What must the value of one individual be to be worth the 
utmost of sacrifice ! (4) The sheep belonged to the Shepherd even while 
it was lost from the fold. "I have found my sheep which was lost." It 
is the appeal of the suffering, anxious love of God that those who have 
lost their way in this world need to hear, in order that they may come to 
themselves and be found of Him. "We love because he first loved us" 
(I John 4 : 19). 

What called forth the three parables in the fifteenth chapter of Luke? 
See verses 1 and 2. How does this reveal the crowning gift of true love? 

IV. The expectation of the Good Shepherd that His friends will share His 
spirit. 

Read Matt. 9 : 36-10 : 1, and John 4 : 35. 

Note: (1) Jesus Christ begins to teach His disciples to look at the mul- 
titudes with His eyes; to see beneath the surface into their troubled, un- 
satisfied hearts; to see the fields ripe for the harvest. (2) The command 
to pray that laborers be sent into the harvest is significant in that the 
prayer develops, in the hearts of those who utter it, the same spirit of 
compassion and yearning that in the end will send them forth into the 
harvest. The prayer is not a petition to overcome any reluctance of God 
to thrust out laborers but the birth of a dominant desire and spirit that 
will bring the intercessors into oneness of spirit with God, and issue in one 
united purpose to redeem the world. 

V. Jesus Christ applies the test of true love to His disciple. 

Read John 21 : 15-17. In this we see the purpose of our Lord that 
we, too, should follow in His steps and shepherd the sheep in His name. 
The motive to which He appeals is not the need of the sheep, although He 



SOME ESSENTIAL CONVICTIONS 27 

had taught His disciples to discern that; but He tests the reality of our 
personal love for Him by its spirit of vicarious sacrifice for those whom He 
loves. From that time on whenever we yearn to see a life redeemed unto 
God it is the spirit of our Lord yearning in and through us. So in truth 
it was said of the disciples: "They went forth, and preached everywhere, 
the Lord working with them" (Mark 16 : 20). 

"O tender Shepherd climbing rugged mountains 
And crossing waters deep — 

How long wouldst Thou be willing to go homeless 
To find a straying sheep? 

I count no time, the Shepherd gently answered, 
As thou dost count and bind 
The weeks in months, the months in years, — 
My counting is just — until I find. 
And that would be the limit of My journey — 
I'd cross the waters deep, 
And climb the hillsides with unfailing patience 
Until I find My sheep." 



CHAPTER IV 

PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 

We have faced our obligations as Christians to help in in- 
terpreting the Christian life to others, and we have seen how 
inevitable and natural it is that we should do this when we re- 
member the simple axioms of our faith; now we are faced by 
the necessity for personal preparation. We do not want to 
bungle when we might be skilful. Failing a perfect instru- 
ment God might use with power even a blunt and rusty blade, 
but He can do more with one that is perfectly adapted for use. 
Our ability to help depends on our knowledge of human life, 
as well as on our knowledge of God and on our wisdom in 
bringing one in relation to the other so that the best wisdom at 
our disposal is none too good for what we are undertaking. 

A full preparation for fellowship with Christ in winning His 
kingdom cannot be attained in a given time. It is a life process 
and grows with experience in actual service. Books and train- 
ing-classes are valuable only in so far as they suggest fields for 
conquest and help us to begin the service with a rational and 
intelligent point of view. 

At the outset let us rid ourselves of the notion that one can 
acquire a mechanical process or set of rules by which people 
can be brought into the kingdom of God. We are not asked to 
tell others what they ought to do, but to live a life of undis- 
guised loyalty to our Lord. Only the outflow and overflow of 
a Christ-controlled life will create in another life a thirst for 
Christ. That woman in India illustrated this fact when she 
said to a Christian missionary: "If your Jesus is like you I 
want to know Him." There is much professional, officious in- 
trusion into the sanctity of another life under the garb of a 
sincere interest in another's spiritual welfare. It smacks of 
professionalism and cant and is usually interpreted justly as 
an impertinence. Because of this the sacred service of relat- 
ing a life to Jesus Christ has often been brought into disrepute 

28 



PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 29 

among sensitive and sincere Christians. "How can a person 
be courteous and considerate and venture to intrude upon an- 
other life even though she comes in the name of Christ ?" was 
a question asked by an earnest student who longed to obey 
Christ's command. The answer is a simple one. Do not 
intrude but wait for that moment when there will be some 
spontaneous self-revelation to which you must respond. Let 
it be your chief concern to yield daily implicit obedience to the 
loving guidance of Christ, keep yourself in the atmosphere of 
purity, peace, and childlike trust and then live your daily life 
steadily and openly. Be constantly alert and watchful, con- 
cerned that others may know Christ and quickly ready to use 
any opportunity that may come to interpret Him to another 
heart by deed or word. We may not say, "I have this after- 
noon free and I will use it to make Christ known to individuals." 
The times and seasons are not in our hands. It is the Spirit 
of God alone who can so relate two people that His life may be 
imparted as if through a live wire. 

There is no release from this service. Every day and every 
hour in the day we must be ready and responsive. There are 
times when one needs to take the initiative. This is pre- 
eminently true in the case of teachers with pupils or in those 
closer personal relationships with our friends. It is easier to 
maintain the accepted even level of friendship than constantly 
to deepen that level. It is the office of a friend to hold one to 
one's best. The greatest stimulus toward the best will be 
found in a mutual sharing of the sources of our strength, the 
purposes of our heart, and our growing friendship with Christ. 
Some of our days are rich with opportunities for quiet walks and 
talks with friends. Who can measure the power of friendships 
based on fellowship with Jesus Christ ? 

As we face some of the ways in which we need to prepare 
ourselves for successful service the following points seem es- 
sential : 

We must have a steadfast relation with Christ as a personal 
Saviour and Master. Mere opinions or theories or inherited 
beliefs concerning Christianity will not suffice. We cannot give 
another what we ourselves do not possess. Paul suggests this 
truth in his letter to the Romans in the words: "For I will not 
dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought 
through me ... by word and deed" (Romans 15 : 18). An 



30 PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 

honest desire to serve must lead one to search one's heart to 
see whether one has a real and living experience with God. 

The honest confession to God of all known sin is necessary. 
There must be also an increasing sensitiveness to the presence 
of sin, a relentless fight against it, and a conviction of ultimate 
victory through Jesus Christ. It is not our perfection of char- 
acter that wins another to Christ but the faithful struggle to- 
ward perfection. It is this that makes it possible for imper- 
fect man rather than the morally perfect angels of God to help 
in redeeming the world. David voices this in his marvellous 
prayer: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right 
spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and 
take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy 
of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing Spirit. Then 
will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be con- 
verted unto thee" (Psalm 51 : 10-13). 

We need also to have a clearly defined conception of the normal 
Christian experience. The essential elements may be stated 
as follows : 

(a) A vision of the holiness of God and the moral require- 
ments of His character. 

(b) A conviction of personal need — that " I have sinned and 
fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3 : 23). 

(c) An acceptance of forgiveness and cleansing through the 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ — " the Son of God who loved me and 
gave himself for me" (Gal. 2 : 20). 

(d) A daily dependence on divine power for spiritual growth, 

(e) A desire for service which makes one long to co-operate 
with God in carrying out His purposes for the world. 

On these foundation-stones God builds individual experi- 
ences each differing from the other. No two will be precisely 
alike, and we cannot expect that people will come to Christ 
through the same experiences or in the same way. Any one 
of the essential elements may be the starting-point of the 
Christian life. For example, one may see a community need or 
a person in sore straits and long to help, only to discover that 
one needs to be linked up with God before attempting to help 
the souls of people. It will be like the man in the parable who 
came saying: " Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend 
of mine is come to me in his journey and I have nothing to set 
before him." In like manner the story of the life and death of 



PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 31 

Jesus Christ may bring a conviction of personal need, or it 
may be the challenge of some moral requirement. A friend 
once said that her careless, purposeless life was changeu from 
the time when she heard in church one day the challenge of the 
Psalm: "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and who 
shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and 
a pure heart" (Psalm 24 : 3, 4). The words haunted her for 
days until she gave herself to God to receive a new life and a 
clean heart. Although in each case the sequence of experience 
is different, the essential elements are the same. 

It is an essential part of our preparation also that we should 
have an increasing knowledge of the Bible. We must know the 
teachings of Jesus, the record of God's dealings with human 
nature through all the ages, and the experiences of the apos- 
tles in interpreting Christ to the world. This does not mean 
that we need the equivalent of a theological course, although 
that is valuable, but it does mean that we shall begin with 
what we know and then by faithful study increase our knowl- 
edge of God by natural growth. A crude, ignorant woman who 
lived on the east side of New York and knew only one verse in 
the Bible, which she learned at a mission, was able to bring five 
of her women friends into a Christian life with that verse as a 
foundation for their faith. It was the word of God to them 
and they acted on it. Thus God uses the little we have if it is 
all we have, but it is only the beginning of what He may do 
through us as we add knowledge and experience day by day. 
It is not necessary for others to know our own thoughts; but 
God's thoughts, paraphrased by our experience, have the 
power to transform a life into likeness to Jesus Christ. There- 
fore we need to be sure that we are measuring our life and 
character by the plumb-line of Jesus' life. 

One of the severest chapters in the Bible is that section in 
the prophecy of Jeremiah which says concerning the teachers 
of that day : " They speak a vision of their own heart, and not 
out of the mouth of Jehovah. ... I spake not unto them yet 
they prophesied. But if they had stood in my councils then 
had they caused my people to hear my words, and had turned 
them from their evil way" (Jer. 23 : 16). And the solemn 
warning comes: "The prophet that hath a dream let him tell 
a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word 
faithfully. What is straw to the wheat? saith Jehovah." 



32 PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 

It is also important that we train our powers of observation to 
understand the laws of human nature. This comes with experi- 
ence, but can be increased in us by trying sympathetically to 
understand the point of view of other people. We must not 
be distracted by outward appearance, but learn to read the 
hidden meanings behind the outward expressions. In the free 
social relationships of modern life it is not difficult to get at the 
inner point of view, for it is unconsciously revealed in so many 
little ways. The kind of pleasures that people turn to for rest; 
the friends they like to be with, the books they enjoy, the 
clothes they wear are all indications of character. The study 
of oneself and one's natural reactions to certain influences is a 
fruitful means of studying human nature. The counsel of 
Jesus, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, 
even so do ye also unto them" (Matt. 7 : 12), is a sure guide. 
It is only as we diagnose ourselves that we can respond to the 
craving of others for honest sympathy and sympathetic hon- 
esty. 

We must also have a right attitude toward the experiences of 
life. In other words, we must learn to see God in relation to 
the circumstances of our lives. Unless we have learned to see 
our lives as fulfilling a divine plan and purpose, we shall be 
likely to miss the meaning of much that comes to us and thus 
be unable to help others. If other people instead of God are 
the norm by which we judge relative values we shall have no 
poise and peace in life. Our attitude toward our limitations, 
toward our possessions, toward suffering, toward restrictions 
of circumstances, and toward our opportunities must be based 
on the certainty that our Father holds all in His control for 
our highest good or we cannot help others who are in the clutch 
of selfish desires to find peace by accepting God's plan for their 
lives. Nothing so marks the difference between a child of 
God and a child of the world as the varying attitudes toward 
the experiences of life. There is a powerful witness in a life 
which actually lives out the words: 

"What Thou shalt to-day provide 
Let me as a child receive, — 
What to-morrow shall betide 
Calmly to Thy wisdom leave. 
'Tis enough that Thou wilt care; 
Why should I the burden bear?" 



PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 33 

A quiet courage coupled with freedom from ulterior motives is 
also imperative. The ruling desire must be for the extension 
of Christ's kingdom and not for personal success. It is not 
success but faithfulness that one must covet, and the courage 
of brave persistence. We must sink ourselves in the message: 

"Not I but Christ, be honored, loved, exalted; 
Not I but Christ, be seen, be known, be heard; 
Not I but Christ, in every look and action; 
Not I but Christ, in every thought and word." 

Our efficiency will depend largely on our flexibility and teach- 
ableness. There should be no dogmatism, no insistence on a 
personal view-point. It is the work of God's Spirit to lead into 
the truth and we must be patient when that work seems slowly 
done. It is an exquisite art, well worth coveting, to know when 
to press the claims of Christ and at the same time to be utterly 
free from any domination of another's will or personality by 
one's own intensity of will-power. We need to guard against 
forcing a hothouse growth in a plant that must stand the rigors 
of an outdoor life. 

Every one who would do important service must be prepared to 
live a sacrificial life. Everything that is worth while costs 
something. To the one whose eyes are on the goal the price 
is incidental. Every doctor makes himself aseptic if he expects 
to be trusted with the issues of human life. There are certain 
things he may not do just because he has the important service 
to perform. In like manner we must be willing to make our- 
selves spiritually aseptic if we are to be trusted with important 
service. This does not mean that there is any virtue in re- 
fraining from legitimate things just for the sake of refraining. 
It is only when we practise self-denial for a purpose that it is 
worth while. Our ability to help another depends on our power 
of spiritual discernment. Such discernment depends largely 
on our sensitiveness of spirit toward God, which may be culti- 
vated or dulled by our habits of life. In fact, much of our 
shrinking from the task of helping others to know God comes 
from the consciousness that we are not ready, that our gar- 
ments are not "unspotted from the world," and that our com- 
munion has been interrupted by what we have been doing. 
Books that coarsen our ideals or blur our moral standards unfit 
us to touch people's hearts. Practices that lower the moral 



34 PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 

tone and leave a disquieting conscience take away the fresh 
spiritual vigor. Without this readiness to pay the price we 
shall never be able to influence people deeply for the kingdom 
of God. In fact we shall have to be willing to obey implicitly 
the directions of Paul when he said: "Whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any praise, if 
there be any virtue, think on these things." 

Finally, it is especially important, in the delicate task of inter- 
preting Christ to another, that we should realize that an inner sense 
of weakness is the normal state of a Christian. We need never 
expect that we shall feel adequate for our task. This sense of 
weakness keeps one dependent on God's power; it keeps one 
humble, it develops tact through increasing sensitiveness to 
atmosphere; it is a constant reminder that any success or 
power is of God alone. Fortunate will it be for us if in all our 
preparation for service we learn this lesson well and have a 
simple, childlike faith in the truth of what Paul learned, " My 
power is made perfect in weakness/' and are able to respond in 
calm trust: "Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses . . . for 
when I am weak, then am I strong" (II Cor. 12 : 9-10). 



BIBLE STUDY IV 
Right Attitudes in Service 

I. A right attitude toward life's experiences and limitations as a training' 
school for character. 

(1) Toward affliction and trouble. — Read I Cor. 1 : 4. What prepara- 
tion for service does Paul suggest as a compensation for suffering? How 
do the words in Heb. 2 : 10-11 read new meaning in the word "brethren" ? 
How is this reinforced by Heb. 4 : 15, 16. What is the full content of 
the word "therefore " in verse 16 ? What confidence does it give us ? Read 
II Cor. 4 : 7-10. How do these experiences keep us from spiritual pride 
and reveal to others the power of God? See II Cor. 4 : 17, 18 for an- 
other reason why trouble is of value to us as servants of God. 

(2) Toward our limitations. — Read II Cor. 6 : 10. Why is it necessary 
to acquire a new sense of values in order to serve others in Christ's name ? 
See II Cor. 8:9. There is an advantage in the limitations of circum- 
stances when they are sincerely accepted, because we can then establish 
simple human relations free from false barriers. We also have freedom 
then to make the spiritual appeal dominant with no ulterior motives. 

(3) Toward our critics and enemies, as an opportunity to release the Father's 
spirit. — Read Matt. 5 : 44, 45. Love is the object-lesson which demon- 



PREPARATION FOR SERVICE 35 

strates the Father's spirit to the world. See also John 17 : 21. Why is 
love a proof that Jesus Christ has come into the world? 

(4) Toward our weaknesses and inadequacy. — Read I Cor. 2 : 3-5 and 
II Cor. 12 : 9-10. Weakness is the normal state of a Christian because 
it keeps us humbly dependent on God. Read James 1 : 5 as a challenge 
to the exercise of faith. See also II Cor. 3 : 4-6 and II Cor. 2 : 14. Is 
not weakness worth while if it makes possible the exhilaration of spiritual 
triumph? 

II. A right attitude of sincerity about ourselves. 

Read Phil. 3 : 12. Do we lose or gain influence by an honest confession 
of our imperfection? Why will people be helped more by one who is 
making progress in the carrying out of a purpose than by one who has 
attained the goal? See I John 1:3. What should be the purpose of our 
relationships with people ? Is it imparting light or entering into a com- 
radeship ? 

III. The right attitude toward sin. 

See Psalm 51 : 10-13. "Create in me a clean heart . . . then will I 
teach transgressors thy ways," etc. What is the effect of sin in the heart? 
See Psalm 66 : 18-19. Sin is the word used to describe the moral sense 
of failing to measure up to God's standard; therefore the conviction of the 
conscience in respect to sin is only the work of God's Spirit. The sense 
of sin deepens as the knowledge of the character of God increases. Sin 
prevents our fellowship with God and separates us from the intimate com- 
munion with Him. 

IV. The right attitude toward the teaching of Christ as a correction for one's 

own opinions. 
Read I Cor. 2 : 1-5 and Heb. 4 : 12-13. We need to face the moral 
challenge of the teachings of Christ and not merely be familiar with them. 
What was the great fault of the people who heard Jesus speak in John 
7 : 37-43? What is the common danger in religious discussion? Think 
over the value of II Tim. 3 : 14-17 as a training for service. In verse 16 
the word " instruction " is rendered in the Greek " discipline in righteous- 
ness." To what degree are our failures in character due to the neglect of 
this teaching? 



CHAPTER V 
SOME LAWS THAT CONDITION MENTAL REACTIONS 

Most of us, at some time or other, have agreed with the old 
Quaker who said to "his better half": "All the world is queer, 
Rachel, except thee and me, and sometimes I think thee also is 
a little queer." Human nature has seemed erratic and askew 
and " there is no accounting for it," we say. This is largely due 
to our ignorance of the natural laws by which the mind works. 
Modern psychology has put into our hands the means of 
getting at the truth about human nature. It helps us to see 
how precisely the mind reacts to a given stimulus if we know 
its basic laws. As we look at Jesus Christ, who "knew what 
was in man," we are awed by the exquisite tact with which He 
knew how to appeal to people in the way that was natural and 
human and irresistible. His methods were rational and He 
used instinctively those principles which we, twenty centuries 
later, stumble upon with the help of psychologists and hail as 
a new discovery. Slowly but surely we are finding new guides 
for our faith, and we are more ready to yield to the reasonable- 
ness of the teaching of Christ. No student of human nature can 
shirk the study of these natural laws and hope to understand 
people. 

There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. 
For example, there is a right way to pick up a kitten and there 
is a wrong way; and the disposition of the kitten and her 
affection toward you is quite dependent upon the way you 
handle her. So with human beings; there is a right and wrong 
way to touch the mind and personality of every one. In our 
Christian work we are responsible for the antagonisms we call 
forth as well as for the assents. We can reduce to a minimum 
the adverse reactions if we understand the natural laws by 
which a mind works. 

In so brief a space as this there can be stated only a few of 

36 



MENTAL REACTIONS 37 

these elemental principles in simple terms as an aid in our efforts 
to help others to know God. A fuller discussion can be found 
in any of the text-books of psychology. 

(1) The mind is controlled more completely by positives than 
negatives. It tends to yield to the suggestion of "do" rather than 
"don't." This law has not always been observed by religious 
teachers, who have pictured the Christian life as a series of 
negatives, as a life so cabined and confined and repressed that 
it had no outlet for its powers. The gospel of Christ has often 
been preached as if it were endless advice about what one 
must "give up" in order to find peace. The gloom of negative 
sin instead of the light of positive goodness has been talked, 
and then one has wondered why people did not naturally re- 
spond to it. The people were only acting naturally as God 
made them, and were just waiting like plants to turn away from 
the dark whenever the positive light of the sun drew them. 
We have only to look back into the history of our own religious 
experience to find illustrations of the results of this negative 
system. 

Sooner or later the normal mind is likely to react from this 
negative view and will in the end follow whatever positive 
teaching is presented to it. One is always in a state of unstable 
equilibrium when the attention is held merely by "Thou shalt 
nots." Sometimes we wonder why Christians of mature years 
suddenly leave their church and take up some new cult and 
vagary in religious teaching. The reason is a simple one. 
That cult, because of its emphasis on one idea, may have been 
the first positive teaching that ever made a dent on the mind, 
and the years of restraint and negative teaching fyad so pent 
up the soul that it had to make a dash for what it thought to 
be liberty, without stopping to see whether the new faith was 
logical and reasonable. Thus the mind is made for action 
rather than for restraint. One must do to know. "He that 
willeth to do my will shall know the teaching," says Jesus, not 
"He that keeps from doing what is not my will." The best 
and only effective way to keep from doing what is wrong is 
to do something else that is right; this is the only way in which 
to focus the attention of mind; it must be held by something 
positive. We shall see how this principle works out in forms 
of religious experience later on. We must centre the attention 
upon the great constructive work that calls forth all our powers 



38 MENTAL REACTIONS 

so that they are not available for the positive suggestions of 
evil. 

(2) One must always take into account the differences in tem- 
perament. We are not all alike; each has his own mental bias. 
Fundamentally we are alike, but our temperamental qualities 
are combined in different proportions. Thus, while we all 
possess intellectual, volitional, and emotional qualities, we 
differ in the way in which these qualities are blended in us. 
We may be strong in one quality and weak in others. Thus 
the needs and temptations of people will vary according to 
their temperamental emphasis. No one counsel will meet the 
need of all. If a person is stronger intellectually than he is 
volitionally he will be tempted to be interested in religious 
teachings without facing their moral challenge for a new life; 
to preach without practising, to be dogmatic without com- 
passion. Such people need to face the message of Jesus when 
He said: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will 
of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 7 : 21), or "Blessed 
are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy" (Matt. 5 : 7). 
Similarly, the person in whom the volitional element is dom- 
inant will be tempted to be stubborn and wilful and resist 
the voice of God. Such individuals need to face the test of 
Jesus' words : " He that doth not take his cross and follow after 
me, is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10 : 38). People who are 
strongly developed emotionally are likely to be guilty of senti- 
mentality and selfishness and need the tonic of those ringing 
words: "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, 
he it is that loveth me" (John 14 : 21). 

In a similar manner the natural expression of the Christian 
life will differ according to temperament and one is not likely 
to have the same religious experience as another. 

The citadel of opposition to God's control of the life will vary 
according to the dominant qualities of temperament. Suppose 
one were trying to win a strongly volitional temperament to 
the control of God's Spirit. The centre of resistance will nat- 
urally lie in the will, for that is the strong point. The line of 
least resistance will be found in the affections or in an appeal 
to the reason, and such people find it easy to yield their wills 
when their hearts are touched by the love of Christ. In the 
same way the emotional temperament is led by an appeal to 



MENTAL REACTIONS 39 

yield the will to God and thus to find that steadying power for 
a new life where the emotions will be controllable. This will 
also be true for the intellectual temperament who will be 
tempted to inconclusive thinking unless the will is yielded to 
God for a new dynamic. The advantage of a personal con- 
versation over a public sermon lies in the fact that one can 
adapt the appeal to the temperament of the individual and 
thus get a fuller response. 

(3) In all religious work we must take full account of the laws 
of habit in dealing with problems of moral and religious life. 
A simple acknowledgment of faith does not reverse all one's life 
habits at once. That is a process which requires many years, 
not a moment of time. By one act of the will one may decide 
to yield oneself wholly to the control of Jesus Christ, but the 
working out of that control is a matter of years, because that 
decision will have to encounter life habits and processes that 
will cut across and contradict all the decisions of the best 
self. 

One must take this into account in helping people religiously. 
We must be prepared for disappointments, or rather we must 
not set up an expectation that will have to be disappointed. 
Take for granted that the decision is perfectly true, sincere, 
and clear, and that it will work itself out slowly in spite of 
waverings until finally it becomes steady and dominant in the 
heart. The religious life of many of us is like the magnetic 
needle of the compass that quivers toward the north and in 
spite of vibrations is held true to the pole. It is not the flicker- 
ing of the will at a given moment that shows the real truth but 
the habitual return to purpose. 

It would be well for us to reread often that classic discussion 
of "Habit" in Professor James's Principles of Psychology and 
learn how to " make our nervous system our ally instead of our 
enemy." New habits have to be built up which will displace 
old ones. New tracks have to be made between nerve-centres 
that will help us in the end to "do good naturally" without 
inner struggles of will. The value of surrounding ourselves 
with "means of grace" and cutting off old associations that 
stifle the new life becomes increasingly apparent. We must 
commit ourselves utterly to the new cause of living a holy life 
without turning back. We must refuse to feed the springs of 
wrong desires, and we must act on every holy purpose we form 



40 MENTAL REACTIONS 

and on every inner voice of conscience. No matter how many 
purposes we may have and no matter how good our sentiments 
may be, if we do not take advantage of every concrete oppor- 
tunity to act, our characters may remain entirely unaffected for 
the better. j 

It is necessary, too, that we learn to discipline our spirits in 
doing each day some service that we are not obliged to do but 
which we want to do merely for the sake of moral training. 
We need to build up a moral margin of strength for the un- 
usual strain that we may have to stand some day. 

Adolescent days are the time when life habits become fixed 
and when the character of one's whole life is determined. By 
voluntary acts of the will we reaffirm the habits of childhood 
or make new ones. Fortunate is that one who yields the will 
so completely to the irresistible Christ that all habits of life 
spring from a supreme Christian purpose. 

In spite of the grim truth that each day we are forging chains 
of habit that will either make us permanently strong or per- 
manently weak, wrong habits can be remade by the power of 
God. New habits can be formed if a new motive is found in 
the heart, and the truth of Saint Paul's words will be realized 
anew: "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old 
things are passed away; behold they are become new" (II 
Cor. 5 : 17). 

(4) It must be remembered also that we are so made that mental 
and physical states are interrelated. Weakness of character 
often has its secret in physical limitations. Physical conditions 
largely determine our mental bias and affect the buoyancy of 
our faith. An enervated body depresses the mind and warps 
the judgment. It weakens our power of concentration and 
thus breaks down our moral resistance, so that we fall an easy 
prey to swift temptations. In the same way some unwhole- 
some emotion or mental obsession reacts on the body and 
undermines its health. There are many people who will never 
have strong bodies until they have a mental and spiritual life 
infilled with God's peace and poise, possible only through a 
vital relationship with Jesus Christ. It is also true that many 
will never be able to overcome certain temptations or live a 
life of faith until they correct the physical weaknesses that re- 
sult from hectic habits of living and build up enough nervous 
energy to reinforce the spirit in times of crisis. We have no 



MENTAL REACTIONS 41 

right to ignore this interrelationship of mind and body or to 
neglect the conditions that supply that essential moral margin. 
In this way only shall we be able to meet the strain of daily 
living and unusual exigencies. Therefore it often happens that 
the most help we can bring to any one at the beginning is definite 
counsel about safeguarding the nervous energy one has and in- 
creasing it. This will be discussed more fully in another chapter. 

(5) In dealing with the religious life of any one we can count 
upon the help of the subconscious life as well as the response of the 
conscious attention. By far the larger part of our mental life 
is beyond and beneath the small area of our conscious attention. 
This subconscious mind is the storehouse for all our mental 
impressions, desires, prejudices, and forgotten experiences. 
Influences that have been unnoticed and all things that are 
latent are found there. We may not be at all conscious of 
paying attention to these impressions, but they sink down into 
our subconsciousness, and some day, by the natural law of the 
association of ideas, they may compel our attention and rule 
our choices. The conscious attention of a person may be 
focussed intently on certain interests that conflict with the 
claims of the spiritual life. Indifference toward God and op- 
position to His will may be the apparent state of the heart; 
when, lo ! some chance word or experience may call up a new 
chain of ideas and holy memories that may sweep over the 
mind like a flood and compel the heart to face its God. 

This reinforcement of the subconscious life ought to increase 
our faith and courage because of the way in which it works. 
It gives new worth to what a religious atmosphere can do for 
a child or any one, in that it makes an unconscious impression 
on the mind which may be a powerful factor in the decision 
of the will later on. It makes every Bible class and religious 
service significant in that it increases the assets which can be 
drawn upon in temptation or need. We are sometimes sur- 
prised at the seeming effect on character of a few words which 
catch the attention of some one we would help. The prob- 
ability is that those few words were only powerful in that they 
released a whole train of thoughts and memories that surged 
in upon the attention from forgotten depths and all together 
led that individual to make a supreme decision for God. This 
makes even incidental conversation significant, for one] never 
knows what it will call forth. 



42 MENTAL REACTIONS 

This storehouse of memories and impulses is peculiarly ac- 
cessible to the Spirit of God, who works within us " to will and 
to do His good pleasure/' "bringing to our remembrance" 
whatsoever God is saying to us. Therefore in all our work for 
others we can count upon our words of appeal being reinforced 
by memories and associations which the Spirit of God brings 
to the attention of the conscious self. 

(6) In the religious life the fundamental motive that moves the 
will is love. This love may be directed toward God, or toward 
self, or toward others. Sometimes the heart is moved by love 
toward God, through its gratitude for the blessings of life, 
for guidance through difficulties and protection from unseen 
dangers. Or it may be through the conscious love of beauty 
that the heart is drawn toward the God of nature. Perhaps, 
too, the pressure of the social needs of humanity may create a 
sympathy and love for the person of our Lord who gave Him- 
self to seek and save those who had wandered away. 

In a similar way the love of self may be a motive to turn the 
will toward God through a fear lest, having gained the whole 
world, one may lose his soul. Ambition and a desire to make 
the most of life may also lead one to seek God, and a self- 
respecting spirit may drive some people to be Christians merely 
from a sense of honor. 

The love of others is a compelling motive for most people. 
The sense of responsibility for another life, the love of a mother 
or friend has pulled many men and women away from unworthy 
lives and turned them to God for help. People who never 
dreamed of seeking God for themselves are eager for help and 
light when they are face to face with some one who needs their 
help. It is fortunate that we are unable to meet the need of 
even one life with our own resources, for it is the sense of utter 
helplessness in the face of the life problems of others near to 
us that brings us to God with the cry of the man described by 
our Lord in the parable: "A friend of mine is come to me from 
a journey, and I have nothing to set before him" (Luke 11 : 6). 



MENTAL REACTIONS 43 

BIBLE STUDY V 
Some Individuals Who Came to Know Christ 

I. An outcast. 

Read John 4 : 1-29. The woman of Samaria. Verses 6, 7. Note our 
Lord's alertness in seeing the need of another; although wearied from the 
journey yet ready to meet any human need. What was His natural method 
of approach? Note that in asking this favor of the Samarian outcast, 
Jesus invested her with the dignity of a hostess to whom one would be 
under obligation. What do the expectations of others call forth in us? 
See verses 9-18. Point out the ways in which Jesus showed His gentle- 
ness and exquisite tact in creating first a curiosity and desire for living 
water before reminding her of her sin. Then in verses 19-26 mark His 
unwillingness to be diverted from the main point and getting at the heart 
of the secret life which the Father "who seeth in secret" desires as His 
temple made clean and fit for His indwelling. How does the last clause of 
verse 23 bring a sense of dignity and worth to the woman's life? 

II. A distinguished traveller. 

Read Acts 8 : 26-30. Here the opportunity to preach the message of 
Jesus Christ comes to a man who is alert and listening to the inner guiding 
spirit. If God looks upon the heart and sees in it a desire to know the 
truth, is it not a simple matter for Him to bring help through any disciple 
who is listening for His inner impulse. The outcome of this conversation 
with the eunuch made Philip know that he had been guided. If we are 
really ready to be used at any moment we will find many a casual jour- 
ney directed by God, even though we may be unconscious of it. How 
can we be sure every day that our steps are directed by God? Have we 
the right to expect that every path of duty and right is part of God's plan 
for us? If this is so, why do we not find more opportunities to t reveal 
Christ along the way? 

In verses 30 and 31 note the tact of Philip's first question. It is~natural 
and not intrusive and inspires a desire for help. Philip did not impose 
his help upon the eunuch, but gives him a chance to speak out his point of 
view. This at once produces the natural desire for an exchange of thought. 
In verse 35 Philip begins at the point where he was reading; the point of 
contact from which a natural development of conversation is possible. 
Why is it that an argument usually fails to give people much help ? Why 
is it always wise to begin with people at the point of their present interest? 
Write out an outline of what you think Philip might have said from his 
text in verses 32 and 33. How would you preach Jesus Christ to a seeker 
after truth from this text ? What must have been the last point in Philip's 
conversation? See verse 36. 

III. The man who toiled for his daily bread. 

Read Luke 5 : 1-11. In verse 3 what might have been in the mind of 
Jesus when He went into Simon's boat instead of the other? What would 
the fact that Jesus was in his boat call out in Simon? Notice the skill of 
Jesus in winning Simon, in recognizing Simon's leadership and asking a 
service within his power; thus enlisting his interest and loyalty to the 



44 MENTAL REACTIONS 

one who was a guest in his boat. Simon was close to" Jesus in the boat, 
co-operating in helping the people get the message, and was won in spite 
of himself. What was the crowning evidence to Simon that here was 
one who could be trusted? Why was it necessary for Jesus to manifest 
his power in the sphere where Simon had most power? What is it that 
produces a spirit of humility in any one? 

In these three cases the disciple was won through the willing obedience 
to the truth spoken. This co-operation of the will which is essential was 
secured at the outset through, first, a strong desire stimulated by curios- 
ity; second, by a childlike, teachable spirit called forth by the tact of 
Philip; third, through loyalty to the obligations of hospitality. In each 
case the best was called forth and used to win discipleship. Can you 
think of people who are inaccessible to the appeal of Christ because some 
worker has called out opposition and prejudice at the start? Notice that 
to each of these three people the approach was made in confidence that 
they were at heart comrades. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NORMAL CHRISTIAN 
EXPERIENCE 

It is not an easy task to discuss this subject. Christian ex- 
perience is so intimate and sacred that it shrinks from ordinary 
scrutiny and it is not possible to measure and weigh the things 
of the Spirit with usual standards. Moreover, the touch of 
God in the life is so delicate and often so hidden from conscious- 
ness that it is not possible to trace it accurately. When we 
remember, too, that the temperamental differences in individ- 
uals give rise to an infinite variety of Christian experiences 
in which certain processes are either lengthened or shortened, 
and that their experiences often lie in the unfathomed depths 
of the subconscious mind, we realize that no discussion of so 
varied a problem can be adequate. 

However, the elements of the Christian life are real and are 
eternal verities. No analysis of them can change their nature. 
In fact, their reality is proven all the more if we can discover 
the orderly methods by which God works in our hearts to 
develop in us a Christian experience. 

The background and general development of a person's re- 
ligious life must always be taken into account before one is 
able to give help at any time of crisis. The law of cause and 
effect works so precisely that we need to know this background 
before we can see where there has been a deviation from a 
normal Christian experience and how a life can be restored to 
a normal relationship with God. 

Every child that is born into the world has a capacity to 
know God and a spiritual instinct for God. It is, as John says, 
" that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world" (John 1 : 9). A little child does not resist the teaching 
about the heavenly Father who is revealed to us by Jesus 
Christ. Children are so near the spiritual world that they ac- 
cept it naturally. The life of the child, unresisting toward 

45 



46 A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

these divine impulses and drawings, is the ideal which our 
Lord had in mind when He said: " Whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter 
therein" (Mark 10 : 15). If the parents have begun from the 
first to train the child in self-control and obedience, helping 
it to understand that the principles of right and wrong are 
God's teaching to which both old and young owe reverence 
and obedience, a broad foundation for a normal Christian life 
will have been laid. Sooner or later the day will come when 
the developing self-consciousness of the child will break out in 
a deliberate refusal to obey the will of the parent, who is the 
unifying authority of the family social group. This is the 
first real crisis in the spiritual life of the child. 

We cannot appreciate the significance of this crisis without 
thinking a moment of the relation between the individual and 
society. At certain times in our experience each has seemed 
to exclude the other. As individuals we have been afraid of 
being directed by the will of the social group lest we lose our 
individuality and give up that personal freedom which is our 
inherent right. Gradually, however, it dawns upon us that 
our sense of individuality grows clearly defined only as we 
measure swords with the wills and opinions of others. We then 
find the strength of our own wills and see ourselves in true per- 
spective. There would be nothing to call out this self-asser- 
tion if we lived alone on a desert island; we find ourselves only 
in our relationships with the social group. This is why the 
family is the ideal setting for the child. Opposition of wills, 
therefore, is natural and a sign of growing individuality. 

At this point we come to a parting of the ways and our 
future depends on the path we take. The first time we meet 
this crisis is at that period of childhood when we consciously 
and deliberately question the will of the parent. Our present 
religious experience is largely colored by the way in which our 
parents met this crisis. Perhaps the will of the child won 
and the authority of the family group was weakened; perhaps 
the will of the parent overcame and suppressed the will of the 
child and compelled blind obedience. Either of these methods 
results in moral weakness. Fortunate, indeed, is that child 
whose family group has been so ideal that this opposition of 
wills is turned into a co-operation of wills whereby the highest 
good is possible both for the child and the family social group. 



A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 47 

In this way a child may enter into its first conscious experience 
with God, through a co-operation of will. 

This co-operation is best secured by developing in the child 
a loyal reverence for the will of God and His moral teaching, 
to which all His children owe obedience. In other words, if 
at the time of wilful refusal to obey the child realizes that the 
will with which he is asked to co-operate is not only the will 
or whim of the parent but is a concrete interpretation of God's 
teaching, a basis for a lasting peace and for the highest individ- 
ual development is secured. As this co-operation must be 
secured if the child is to find its highest self-realization, the 
issue of obedience or disobedience is all-important. If at the 
time of the refusal to obey the wise will of the parent the 
parent secures obedience, then the normal growth of the child's 
spiritual life is assured; if through weakness or mistaken love 
the parent lets the "clash of wills" abide, then a sense of sin 
develops. The child is conscious of the ever-widening break 
in its oneness and fellowship with its parent and with God, 
and repeated instances of disobedience only widen the gulf 
and harden the heart of the child to spiritual appeal. 

Many children grow up to be adults without ever having 
co-operated willingly in obedience in all their experience. 
Their spiritual weakness is pitiful; their wills have become stub- 
born; they are in a continual state of rebellion and discontent 
with God and His purposes, they are conscious of hopeless dis- 
couragement, something seems "always wrong" with them. 
All this inheritance from an unconquered youth they have to 
bear in addition to the serious questions of adult life which 
require an open mind and a reverent, obedient will. Much 
so-called intellectual difficulty in matters of Christian faith is 
rooted in an undisciplined spirit that has rebelled so steadily 
in disobedience to parents that it inevitably questions even 
God's methods and purposes. Christian mothers little realize 
how they are handicapping the future of their children when 
they do not help their children to meet their first spiritual crisis 
and win a full victory of willing obedience at a time when it is 
easier than it ever will be later. 

Various motives may help a child to face its need for an 
obedient co-operative will. It may be a fear of consequences 
that deters for the time being, until some higher considerations 
win the child's loyalty; it may be a love that cannot bear to 



48 A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

have the intimacy of relationship withdrawn and therefore 
forces the will to yield. Or the compelling motive may be the 
prick of an inner conscience that knows that God is right and 
that His standard of conduct ought to prevail. Fortunate is 
the child that has been trained to have such a conscience, for 
out of this experience comes the sense of personal need and the 
spirit of penitence and teachableness that makes the highest 
self-development possible. In fact, the recognition of personal 
shortcomings is part of the spiritual process of regeneration; the 
new attitude of mind that issues in a will to obey the entreaties 
of the Spirit of God and begin a new life. 

The value of keeping before children the moral standards of 
God cannot be overestimated as a help in training a sensitive 
conscience and securing a co-operative will. The Old Testament 
stories of men and women who had vivid, clear-cut experiences 
with the elemental laws of God and who were as human as we 
are, are of special value for the religious teaching of children. 
The perfection of the life of Jesus Christ is all the more radiant 
in comparison. A group of dirty children were once playing 
in an East Side street, when out of a house came a little girl 
dressed in spotless white, going with her mother on a visit. 
One of the children dropped the hands of the others and stood 
looking wistfully at the little girl in white, and as she gazed at 
her quite unconsciously her hand reached back and pulled the 
corner of her apron over a big soiled place in front. There 
were no words spoken, but a woman passing by saw a spiritual 
process going on — a general need for cleanliness had become a 
personal longing in that little spirit, through the sight of a 
perfect standard. 

The sense of personal longing for a life more pleasing to God 
brings a teachable spirit that results in a dedication of one- 
self to a renewed obedience to the teaching of God. This re- 
sults in a closer fellowship with Him, in which prayer becomes 
a communion, in which there is no sense of barriers. God is 
accessible and increasingly near and the life becomes buoyant 
and free, growing in love and a desire to serve Him. This 
ought to be the normal life of a Christian child up to the time 
of adult life, expressing itself simply in obedience, reverence, 
love, and service. 

As one grows into adult life the full responsibility of making 
one's own decisions comes as a new experience. The former 



A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 49 

authority of parents in all matters of decision becomes inade- 
quate in the face of responsibilities to other social groups in 
business, college, society, et cetera, and the Christian youth 
must find a new authority to obey. If the moral standards and 
claims of God have been increasingly recognized in the life, 
then the inadequacy of the parental authority brings no shock 
to the experience, for the will goes quietly on putting Jesus 
Christ in control as a guide and corrective for all conduct, and 
as the closest and never-failing Friend for all exigencies. The 
lack of experience in life is re-enforced by His wisdom and there 
is a steady growth in wisdom and judgment. 

Contrast, however, the plight of a child of a Christian home 
who comes to the baffling questions of adult life with no rever- 
ence for the authority of its parents because they have never 
helped it to grow in willing co-operation and with no experience 
in obeying the still small voice of God in the conscience because 
His standards never were faced. Right and wrong became 
blurred because they were ignored. Add to this the positive 
peril of a self-will that is imperious and uncontrolled, working 
harm to its possessor as well as to others. Then let such a 
youth start out in school or business or society, where amidst 
the confusion of shifting scenes one must see straight and think 
clearly and find poise, and he is about as safe as a toddler would 
be on a crowded avenue with no strong one by its side to guide 
and no wisdom within. 

There are hundreds of boys and girls in American Christian 
homes that are being turned out into adult life thus handi- 
capped. They have no rudder or pilot, no clear-cut standards 
that line up with the life of Jesus Christ, they are headstrong 
and impetuous with all the new powers of their adolescence, 
they are faced by sinister realism and by every possible moral 
problem, and yet parents and friends refuse to believe that 
disaster can come to their children. Any one who works 
closely with the youth of to-day knows the result. 

Many of those who come from Christian homes fare worse 
than those from homes where there has been no pretense of 
Christian upbringing, because when such young people meet 
disaster they do not turn to Christianity with any hope of 
rinding a guide, because past experience with religion has not 
commanded their respect; to the non-Christian it may come as 
a new untried cure for sin. It is a pity that sooner or later, 



50 A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

even far along in life, people have to go back and learn the 
lessons that they should have known as children. Even at the 
price of fierce struggle these people have to be helped to yield 
their wills to God and begin to build up a life of obedience. 
The seeming necessity for the intensities of religious "revivals" 
is due very largely to the numbers of people who have always 
lived inwardly rebellious toward God and man, untouched by 
the ordinary normal teaching of the church. 

When we realize that this is often the secret of the lax moral 
standards and superficial religious life of so many people to-day, 
we ought to bend all effort toward helping to supplement the 
lack of religious training in the home with the wisest kind of 
personal help and influence. We need to understand the par- 
ticular situation in the life of the average boy and girl in their 
"'teens" and meet them with a sympathy and personal help 
that will be real and adequate for their need, so that as soon as 
possible by their own choice they may put Jesus Christ in full 
control in their life and conduct and begin to obey Him in 
everything, cost what it may, entering thus into a normal 
Christian experience. When they do this, as they see wherein 
they have been handicapped in the past, they will begin to co- 
operate intelligently with God in their personal development. 

The one daily question of the heart then becomes this: 
"How can I meet the situations in this day in the spirit of 
Jesus Christ; what does He want me to do to-day?" So we 
ought to go on from strength to strength in spite of the stum- 
blings of inexperience and the wrestling with new problems. 
The Spirit of God guides us into all the truth until we come 
into our highest self-realization, achieved by the repeated 
"clash of wills" and co-operation with the revelations of truth 
that come to us from those in other social groups who, too, 
are reflecting some part of God's universal truth that we need 
for our own completeness. Then the relation of the individual 
Christian to the social group becomes like the relation of the 
bits of colored glass to the design of a great cathedral window. 
Each comes to its highest perfection as each is a perfect medium 
for the glory of the sun, and as each blends with and adds to 
the beauty of the other bits. In this way alone can the great 
design and purpose of the artist shine forth. 



A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 51 

BIBLE STUDY VI 

Entering into the Kingdom 

I. Two types of people who enter. 

(1) Read Matt. 13 : 44. Some people make sudden discoveries of 
God. They are like the man who stumbled on the treasure unawares and 
was willing to give up everything he possessed in order to have it. The 
treasure was revealed by the unexpected turn of circumstances. 

What are some of the life experiences which uncover the great treasure 
in God? See Psalm 119 : 71. Does all sorrow have this effect? If 
not, why not? Do we have to wait for such experiences to come in or- 
der to persuade others to heed the claims of Christ, or is there any other 
way we can vivify spiritual truth so as to rivet the attention of our friends ? 
What is likely to be the weakness in the development of a Christian ex- 
perience when the new life has been one of sudden discovery? What 
its strong points? 

"Why do I creep along the heavenly way 
By inches in the garish day? 

Last night when darkest clouds did round me lower, 
I strode whole leagues in one short hour ! " 

(Mrs. W. F. Slocum.) 

See Acts 16 : 22-34. Why was fear the dominant element in the life 
of the jailer? Had his work or training anything to do with this? How 
was this fear transformed into fearlessness (verses 33, 34) ? ^What recon- 
struction did it immediately require in the attitude of the jailer toward 
Paul and Silas in view of his former relation to them? (verse 23). In 
what ways is the jailer like the man in the parable? 

(2) Read Matt. 13 : 45, 46. Other citizens of the kingdom are like 
this man who had always appreciated and traded in pearls, and at last 
finds one which is worth his entire collection. The appreciation of the 
great pearl was developed by a long life of appreciating smaller pearls and 
seeking the best. When people come into the kingdom through a long 
process of religious education and growth, what in their experience is 
likely to be a hindrance to reality? What are the advantages and strong 
points ? 

See Acts 16 : 14-15. How was Lydia's habit of reverence and worship 
of God a preparation for Paul's message? Why did not Paul take it for 
granted that Lydia had the right spirit and therefore did not need further 
help? Why are we not as keen about the need of such people as we are 
of those like the jailer? Why is it important to win the Lydias of the 
world to the fulness of faith in Christ? 

"The path of the righteous is as the dawning light, 
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 

(Prov. 4 : 18.) 

II. Some of the conditions for entrance into the kingdom. 

Read Matt. 18 : 1-4. Here the test is that we "turn, and become as 
little children" in order to enter. What does it mean to become a little 



52 A NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

child? How can we develop this filial spirit? In view of the fact that 
we do not know what even a day may bring forth, it is amazing that we 
should dare for one moment to be anything but little children with our 
Father; utterly dependent and willing to be guided; trustful and simple 
in our relationship with Him. 

Read John 3 : 3, 5. How can we meet this condition and know that 
we are born from above? Read Luke 11 : 13 and John 1 : 12, 13. Here 
the secret is found in the childlike willingness to receive the gift of the 
spirit of the new life. See also Heb. 10 : 21, 22. The test of being "born 
of water" is conditioned by our willingness to be cleansed from an accus- 
ing conscience through the redeeming love of the Saviour. 

Read Matt. 7 : 21-23 for the third condition of entrance into the king- 
dom — the doing of our Fathers will. Love for God and knowing Him is 
only possible through obedience; making it our ambition to blend our will 
with His and keeping His commandments. " He that hath my command- 
ments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me 
shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself 
unto him" (John 14 : 21). 



CHAPTER VII 
THE ONENESS OF SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 

It has been the glory of the Christian faith that the indwell- 
ing Spirit of God redeems and transforms not only the spirit 
and disposition but also the mind and the body; that all three 
are necessary for full self-realization. The relation between 
these three is so precise and subtle that each reacts instantly 
to the experiences of the other. If the body is weakened the 
spirit is depressed; if the mind is burdened the muscles and 
circulation of the body show the effects. Even before the 
Christian era the proverb runs, "A merry heart maketh a 
cheerful countenance; but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is 
broken" (Prov. 15 : 13); and the Psalmist asks: "Why art 
thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted 
within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who 
is the help of my countenance, and my God" (Psalm 42 : 11). 

It follows, therefore, that if we try to help people to find 
their centre in God we must take into account not only their 
spirits but their minds and bodies; for the attitude of the spirit 
may be a reaction from some mental bias or bodily weakness. 
These inhibiting causes must be dealt with before the spirit 
can be set free. Many of the modern vagaries and faddish 
religious sects have held the popular ear because for so many 
years the full Christian message of the intimate union of body, 
mind, and spirit was overlooked. Most of the modern "isms" 
have come as a natural reaction from the materialistic emphasis 
of the science of medicine which ignored for so long the relation 
of mind and spirit to the needs of the body. The reaction has 
gone to the other extreme, as most reactions do, and preaches 
the dominance of mind and spirit while it ignores or deplores 
the body. Both the former materialism of medicine and the 
spiritual philosophy of the modern cults are inadequate and 
partial. We will soon have the sense to voice our desires in 

53 



54 SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 

those reassuring old-time words of Paul: "The God of peace 
himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul 
(mind) and body be preserved entire, without blame at the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth 
you, who will also do it" (I Thess. 5 : 23, 24). 

In tracing the connection between Christian character and 
bodily states those graphic sentences of Doctor King's may well 
be emphasized: "The centre of character is self-control. The 
centre of self-control is will. The centre of will is attention. 
Now, what has all this to do with the body? Just this. 
It takes nervous energy to attend; and the supreme condition, 
therefore, of power of attention, so far as the body is concerned, 
is surplus nervous energy " (King, Personal and Ideal Elements 
in Education, page 242). We all know only too well the truth 
of this in our daily experience. The necessity, then, of increas- 
ing our surplus nervous energy becomes a sacred obligation 
which we owe to God if we are honest in asking Him for help 
in spiritual growth. 

A young teacher indulged herself in the excitement of late- 
hour festivities so that she could not sleep. Then she went to 
her school with nerves all on edge, so that the slightest incident 
called forth irritation. Before noon she had lost the respect of 
all around her for her Christian character. Her margin of 
nervous energy was too slender to allow her to take liberties 
with it for even one night. The strain of life is so great that 
even with a maximum of nervous energy one cannot afford to 
be a spendthrift. When we form the habit of bringing the 
needs of every part of our threefold life to God for guidance 
and control it will be easier to live a proportioned life that will 
have steadiness and power. 

Our margin of nervous energy not only reacts on our dis- 
position but on our mental perceptions. Many cases of mental 
fog and bewilderment concerning belief in God are a direct re- 
sult of ignoring bodily needs. A brilliant university student 
was reported to be in a state of extreme mental tenseness be- 
cause she could not believe in God, and no intellectual evidence 
seemed reasonable. A number of people had argued and tried 
to convince her to no effect. A friend who suspected the real 
truth took her away for a week-end to sleep long hours, refusing 
to discuss religion with her. On going back to the university 
she said shamefacedly: "How could I ever have been such a 



SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 55 

fool ! Of course, I know there is a God. I was too tired to 
think." It takes the correlation of every part of our being to 
furnish the perfect instrument on which the Spirit of God can 
play and reveal Himself. 

Sometimes we are caught in the continuity of what seems 
like "a vicious circle" between spirit, mind, and body. The 
sins of the spirit depress the mind and rob the body of vitality. 
This weakened body in turn shackles the spirit so that it yields 
more easily to sin again, and thus, unless victorious spiritual 
forces are released to correct such inhibitions, an endless chain 
of cause and effect is forged. 

Chief among these inhibitions is the spirit of fear. It is the 
chronic state of all those who have not an intimate filial relation 
to the God and Father revealed by Jesus Christ. It is not the 
will of God that any of His children should be slaves of fear. The 
Psalmist voices this in his experience: "I sought the Lord and 
he heard me and delivered me from all my fears" (Psalm 34 : 
4). The words of Jesus bring the same reassurance: " My peace 
I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let 
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful" (John 14 : 
27). Again Paul confirms this when he says: "For ye have not 
received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have re- 
ceived the spirit of adoption" (Romans 8 : 15). And yet in 
spite of this teaching, which is the very heart of the gospel, 
there are comparatively few whose spirits are not in some kind 
of bondage to fear. They bear the marks of it in their minds 
and bodies because they do not accept the deliverance that God 
provides. 

At some time or other every one experiences fear as a result 
of committing some personal sin. "I heard thy voice and 
was afraid," falters Adam after he has sinned, and thus he 
words the universal experience of the race. The fear that 
comes on the heels of sin saddles the mind with a guilty load 
and causes the body sleepless hours, takes away buoyant joy, 
and appetite for food, brings on a restless feverishness or a 
depressing chill, if, indeed, it does not leave deeper marks on 
the body. The only sure deliverance comes when we fulfil 
the condition of owning to our sin and confess it to God and 
to the one we may have wronged, thus finding the reality of 
forgiveness in the restoration of the relationships that had been 
estranged, There are many people who will never be well 



56 SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 

physically or poised mentally until they deliver their spirits 
from fear by the confession of their haunting sin. 

Again, the spirit of fear may come from the uncertainties in 
life and circumstances which weight the mind with worry, and 
is the direct cause of many bodily diseases. We cannot be 
free spirits until we are delivered from this fear. The secret of 
deliverance is found, first, in facing the actual truth and cause 
of the worry, looking at it steadily. Trying to forget worry 
will not cure it. We must be brave enough to look at the 
cause honestly, and see how much of it is pure imagination or 
inference from insufficient data and how serious the actual 
situation is. When we have detached the real from the 
imagined burden, we should then ask ourselves whether we 
have it in our power to change conditions. If we have we must 
plan quietly to alter them; if we find conditions are beyond our 
wisdom or control then we must go to God in childlike trust, 
realizing that nothing is too difficult for Him, give the burden 
into His keeping, and come away with a relieved heart. Pro- 
fessor James says: "The sovereign cure for worry is religious 
faith." If our religion does not help us in these matters, if 
it does not change us, then it would be well for us to seek anew 
our living heavenly Father. 

It is the prayer of faith and trust that sets in motion life- 
giving forces that bring new vitality to body, mind, and spirit. 
In order to have a permanent trust, communion with God must 
be developed not alone by spasmodic pleadings when under 
great mental stress, but by the daily habit of prayer. It be- 
comes easy to trust God with great anxieties when we have 
learned to trust Him with small troubles. Doctor Hyslop, 
superintendent of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London, 
writes: "As an alienist and one whose life has been concerned 
with the sufferings of the mind, I would state that of all hygienic 
measures to counteract disturbed sleep, depressed spirits, and 
all the miserable sequels of a distressed mind, I would undoubt- 
edly give the first place to the simple habit of prayer — such a 
habit does more to calm the spirit and strengthen the soul to 
overcome incidental emotionalism than any other therapeutic 
agent known to me." 

The spirit of fear is also caused by insincerity which flies 
under false colors and sets up false standards. So many lack 
courage to be themselves and are led on to pretend to be what 



SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 57 

they are not. This results in mental tenseness and physical 
fatigue that often ends in nervous prostration. It may be in- 
sincerity in false standards of living or the strain of keeping 
up with what that hypothetical "they" will expect. It may 
be insincerity in personal relationships in which we are merely 
posing. Peace and poise can only come by a decision of the 
will to be genuine and truthful and self-respecting whatever the 
cost. It means that we speak truth not only in our hearts 
to God but also in our relations to others. Health and peace 
have come to many when they have turned away from sham 
and quietly accepted their limitations in simplicity and honesty. 

But it is not alone fear that inhibits the spirit; often it is 
self-will. This reacts on the mind in irritability and on the 
body in nervousness. The self-will may be hidden from view 
because people are so conscious of the mental and bodily ef- 
fects that they do not realize the cause ; but its ear-marks are 
plainly seen in unwillingness to let others do what they choose 
and in a constant effort to control the cosmos. One hears such 
people say: "That woman will drive me crazy," or "I am so 
nervous I can't stand it," etc. Now, as a matter of fact, they 
are not likely to go "crazy" or be unable to "stand" things, 
but they will never get spiritual poise and peace with God until 
they accept the universe and the people in it as they are, and 
grant to others the same freedom of action and individuality 
that they expect for themselves. Such people need a new per- 
spective in which they themselves are small and God's world 
and all its varied personalities are large. There is nothing that 
so reduces one's temperature and lowers the nervous pressure 
as concentrating the mind on the mighty God, and so finding 
the quietness of a yielded will that is sure that " God's complete- 
ness flows around our incompleteness, round our restlessness 
His rest." * 

There is yet one more inhibition on the life of the spirit: it 
is the spirit of selfishness that reacts on the mind in brooding 
over slights or neglects and that inevitably generates anger 
and jealousy with all their serious physical effects. Self- 
centredness is responsible for many functional diseases and a 
life is never free for service until this root of trouble is removed. 
The only remedy is the deliberate denial to self of the right to 
reign in the heart and the placing of Jesus Christ on the throne 

* Mrs. E. B. Browning 



58 SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 

of the life, giving Him in all things the foremost place. It is 
only as we face the ugly fact that the jealous love of self always 
involves hatred of others and cuts us off from the possibility 
of the relationships of love that we see our need for a Redeemer 
who can save us from ourselves. " He died for all that they who 
live should no longer live unto themselves but unto him who 
for their sakes died and rose again" (II Cor. 5 : 15). It is the 
gateway into full self-realization, for as we "lose our life" in 
God we discover in truth that "we find it." 



BIBLE STUDY VII 
A Full Redemption 

I. The centre of control. 

Read Prov. 4 : 23; Jer. 17 : 9; Eph. 3 : 17, 1st clause; I Cor. 6 : 18, 20; 
Romans 12 : 1, 2. The human spirit, mind, and body dwell together in 
harmony only when the spirit or heart is in control; and yet the heart can- 
not control itself. It in turn must be controlled by the Spirit of God. 
When the body is presented to God as a living sanctuary where He may 
dwell in full control, the human spirit is then cleansed, steadied, and re- 
enforced for the guidance of the mind and body. See II Cor. 7 : 1. 

II. The sympathetic relation between spirit, mind, and body. 

See Psalm 32 : 1-6. Note the physical effects of the unconfessed sin 
of the spirit. Read Psalm 77 : 3, 4; Prov. 15 : 13, 30. In what other 
ways have you traced the interrelation in your own experience? How 
does the state of the heart show itself in the muscles of the face? in the 
circulation? in the vitality of the nervous system? 

"Of the bodie soul its form doth take 
For soul is form and doth the bodie make." 

(Spenser.) 

III. The ideal for the Christian. 

I Thess. 5 : 23, 24. If this is the goal, what will be our attitude toward 
the details of daily living? See I Cor. 10 : 31; II Cor. 5 : 15; II Cor. 
10 : 5. If we believed that our spirit, mind, and body were of equal im- 
portance in the sight of God, how would this change our ideas about what 
should be called sacred? What importance did Jesus attach to the heal- 
ing of the body as well as the heart in his work? Matt. 4 : 23, 24. 

IV. Overcoming the inhibition of fear. 

Read II Tim. 1|: 7; Isaiah 41 : 10, 13; Isaiah 43 : 1. The deliverance 
from the spirit of fear is the privilege of every Christian. Psalm 34 : 4 
ought to be true of every one of us. If we truly believe that God makes 
our hearts His dwelling-place we ought to find relief from the physical and 
mental fears in our daily experiences: (a) From the fear of enemies, Psalm 
3 : 4-6. If David could utter these words of quiet trust when fleeing 



SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY 59 

from Absalom, how much more ought we to be able to trust the words of 
Jesus Christ in John 14 : 27. (6) From the fear of solitude, Psalm 4 : 8, 
using the word " alone' ' in its marginal rendering "in solitude." (c) From 
the fear of future want, Matt. 6 : 25-34. (d) From the fear of death, Psalm 
23 : 4; John 14 : 1-3; John 11 : 25. (e) From the fear of separation from 
God because of sin, I John 1:7-9; John 8 : 34-36; Matt. 11 : 28, 29. 
V. The transformation of the body because of God's indwelling. 

Read Ex. 34 : 29; Psalm 34 : 5 (in the revised version); Daniel 12 : 3. 
These words are confirmed by the teaching of our Lord. Note the similar- 
ity in the description of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, Matt. 
17 : 2, and His description of what the righteous shall be like in the king- 
dom of their Father. See Matt. 13 : 43. See Acts 6 : 15; also Paul's 
description in II Cor. 3 : 17, 18, and that of John in I John 3 : 2. 

Questions for Study 

Why is prayer a means of mental and physical peace? Why would 
prayer for the body be ineffective unless it were the outcome of a spirit 
that has been cleansed and whose desires are controlled by God? How 
do we contradict the desires of our heart through lack of self-discipline in 
the life of the body? How can the supremacy of the spirit be helped by 
the body? How is the judgment of the mind affected by a wrong spirit? 
In view of the purpose that God has for the perfecting of our spirit, mind, 
and body, why is it that we are so content with a partial redemption that 
affects only one part of our being? 



CHAPTER VIII 

REQUISITE CONDITIONS FOR SPIRITUAL 
COMRADESHIP 

We have seen how the mind works naturally according to 
certain laws and how the development of the Christian life it- 
self follows the natural sequence of cause and effect. In this 
chapter we shall discuss some of the general principles that 
every Christian would do well to heed when confronted by an 
opportunity of coming near to the life of another who needs 
spiritual help. These principles follow the natural laws of re- 
lationship that are dictated by common sense, courtesy, and an 
appreciation of the sacredness of our trust. 

(1) Always begin at the natural point of contact, starting with 
what is mutually accepted and known. Usually the points of 
agreement in faith will be the stepping-stones to the point 
yet to be attained in order that full faith and light may come. 
The inductive method is as useful in matters of religion as in 
science. It is never wise to begin with an argument in which 
each person is on an opposite side of a controverted question. 
It only ends in a mental fencing-match and there can be no real 
comradeship in it. The way of faith is a path on which one 
goes without knowing all that is to come, revealing itself slowly 
as one sure step after another is taken. For example, a person 
may start out saying, "I do not believe Jesus is the Son of 
God," and may want to debate the matter. A wise friend will 
reply: " Well, if He is not that to you, what do you believe Him 
to be ?" The reply may be: " He is the great specialist in char- 
acter who knew more about what God is like than any other 
teacher." If that is the point of beginning, be content with 
that and lead one on to see that if He is the great specialist in 
character then His teaching is the most trustworthy and should 
command respect, etc., and then go on to see whether the 
questioner is willing to begin to follow some of His teaching, 

60 



SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 61 

and take literally the challenge, " If any man willeth to do his 
will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or 
whether I speak from myself" (John 7 : 17). If the challenge 
can be honestly met then begin to examine some of the teach- 
ings that show the unmistakable will of God and begin to apply 
them unflinchingly to ordinary daily situations. God never 
fails to lead a spirit out into His truth if this test is made. In 
other words, we must begin at the exact point in experience 
where we find people in full agreement and go on with them 
from step to step, instead of trying to get them to acquiesce in 
what we see clearly. There is nothing that will so test the 
honesty of the one who is seeking light as the test that comes 
from applying at once the light he has as a means of getting 
more. We must go no faster than we can carry people with us. 
We shall find that God has not left Himself without a witness 
in each heart and if we begin at that point in all sincerity, more 
light will come. 

(2) The natural temperament of the individual will largely 
determine the method of approach. Each person must be studied 
as an individual to whom we must specially adapt ourselves. 
Our success in this will naturally depend upon our sensitiveness 
and our powers of observation. There are some of us who seem 
able to appreciate only one kind of temperament and are not 
able to understand other kinds. The only way we can gain this 
knowledge is by studying sympathetically the temperaments of 
our different friends. Try to discover their especially strong 
and weak points, their tastes and habits of life — the things they 
dislike and their mental bias, the way they work and the domi- 
nant characteristics of each. Soon by making a comparative 
study of many of the same temperament we grow instinctively 
to know what they will like, what parts of the message of Christ 
will appeal most to them, and what will stir their antagonism. 
It is a lifelong study, this knowing people; and with all our 
care and eagerness to help we make big mistakes. It will help 
us much if we study the very human relations of Jesus Christ 
and men like Paul, and see how wisely and tactfully they dealt 
with the different natures of their friends. Love and sym- 
pathy are great allies in this. When people recognize these 
qualities in our hearts they are won, even though their personal 
peculiarities are not at that time fully understood by us. Surely 
we would have no right to try to help without a sincere sym- 



62 SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 

pathy for different kinds of people and the love of Christ in 
our hearts. 

(3) It is safe to infer that the real need is usually deeper than 
the conscious difficulty. In spiritual diseases as well as in physi- 
cal illness the real symptoms are often not the apparent ones 
but are likely to result from a hidden cause. Therefore we 
should not take obvious difficulties too seriously at first. It 
is usually true in life that we are more conscious of the effects 
than we are of the causes. Many people wonder why, for ex- 
ample, they are not conscious of God's presence in prayer and 
why they seem unable to pray. It takes a mature Christian 
to sit down and discover through self-examination that there 
has been some forgotten sin or some unchristian disposition of 
heart that has hidden the face of God and broken the commu- 
nion; and that when that is made right the continuity of the 
prayer life is restored. Similarly, the apparent difficulty may 
be some failure to win a victory over some habit, although the 
real cause may be some failure to have faith in God's power, 
or some neglect in the education of the will. A college girl once 
confided in a friend that her great spiritual trouble was a lack 
of reality-^-that God had seemed for a year or more millions of 
miles away. In the end she was led to seek the cause in the 
fact that she had been so angry with her brother over some 
family matter that she had not written to him for many months. 
As soon as she dealt with that hard heart of hers and wrote a 
letter of reconciliation, the sense of God's presence came back 
to her and as she put it: " It seems as though I would burst with 
joy — God is so near to me." In the same way one may scoff 
at Bible study as uninteresting when the real source of trouble 
is an insincere mind which is not willing to take time for the 
Christian life, or an unwillingness to meet the moral challenge 
of the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

(4) Personal conversation should never be carried on with any 
one in the presence of others. Be sure always to respect personal 
reserve. It is only the natural, spontaneous expression of one 
heart to another that one has a right to know. It seems un- 
necessary to remind ourselves to be courteous and thoughtful of 
others; yet we have only to look back into our own experiences 
to the times when we have been embarrassed by the thought- 
lessness of well-meaning people to appreciate the value of this 
suggestion. There is nothing more harmful than the officious 



SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 63 

intrusion into the sanctity of another person's inner life with God 
and no motive can justify it. We may draw near to another, 
but we may never intrude. Most of us will appreciate the dis- 
cerning words of Drummond in his comment on some of the 
religious workers of the past: "They were most of them want- 
ing in that delicacy of handling which makes analysis effective 
instead of insulting." The root meaning of the word tact 
suggests sensitiveness of touch; the kind that feels and senses 
situations and discerns the view-point of the other person. Re- 
spect for personality and the sacredness of the inner life will 
keep one free from the clumsy mistakes that are so often made. 
There is a mystic circle drawn around the personality of every 
one and no one may step over it without a personal invitation, 
and without that spontaneous opening of the door whose latch 
is on the inside. If we have ever been counted worthy to enter 
the portal we dare not betray that trust by becoming vandals 
instead of tried friends. 

(5) The greatest helpfulness is only possible when we identify 
ourselves with the needs of others in the sympathy that speaks of 
"our needs" instead of "your needs." It behooves us all to be 
humble. Any insincerity that shows itself in an "I am holier 
than thou" attitude shows that we ourselves need to see our- 
selves as we are in God's presence. It is God's plan that people 
should learn to know Him through the might of His power 
working out our transformation; so that all may see what a 
wonder-working God we have. Paul is continually encouraging 
us in spiritual growth by referring to the change that has been 
wrought in him. He glories in the fact that "we have this 
treasure in a fragile vessel of clay, in order that the surpassing 
greatness of the power may be seen to belong to God, and not to 
originate in us" (II Cor. 4 : 7, Weymouth). It is the simple 
way in which we bear witness to what God has done in us and 
for us that makes others want to know Him too. This quiet 
owning up to the way God has helped us never repels; and this 
spirit is never guilty of intrusion. In fact it binds us to one an- 
other with a tie that calls out an answering response, and a de- 
sire to share the same experience. There is much wise psychol- 
ogy back of this too. The mind instinctively tends to react and 
resist in self-defense when facing a direct attack; whereas it is 
relaxed and off its guard when it is merely the observer of what 
is going on in another mind. The will is thus relaxed and is 



64 SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 

ready for a redirection of effort. It often yields more easily 
to reaction than to direct pressure — and we shall often be sur- 
prised at the moral initiative that is shown at such a time. 
Every bit of spontaneous desire that comes from the heart of 
the one we would help will take that person a long way in find- 
ing the power of God for himself. 

(6) Whatever is said in counsel should be in harmony with the 
truth of God rather than the statement of a mere personal opinion. 
It is not the harmonizing of one human opinion with another 
than can help a person to know God, but the reasonableness 
of faith in His word that brings peace and trust. It makes 
little difference to another what I think, but it matters much if 
I can bear faithful witness to the truth of the teaching of Jesus 
Christ and the way it has worked in my life. It is so easy to 
sway the life of another by our convictions, especially if that 
person is bound to us by ties of affection and trust; therefore 
we must be scrupulous in our care that our convictions are those 
of Jesus Christ so that they will have permanent value and 
continue to hold the heart long after we have been taken away 
from a place of influence. Our words have more weight if we 
can say: "These are not my words but the explicit teaching of 
Jesus Christ and He must be right." In this way one has a 
double appeal; the appeal of one's personal influence, and the 
appeal of the moral authority of God. This brings full con- 
fidence and rest. This does not mean that we are to go around 
firing Bible verses at people, quoting them as mottoes or preach- 
ments. No, the word must become flesh and be incarnated in 
our life so that as we speak out of our experience, our hearts will 
be confirming the truth of the word we are teaching. We 
really possess only as much of God's word as has become part 
of the fibre of our being. 

(7) Never override the will of the individual. The tempta- 
tion often comes to use personal influence and the intensity 
of desire for another's good to compel a premature decision of 
the will. Such insidious allurements must be steadfastly re- 
sisted. Sooner or later the person so influenced will see that 
an unfair advantage has been taken at a moment of weakness 
and a bitter reaction is likely to occur. It is especially easy for 
an older or more experienced person to bring the pressure of 
personal influence to bear on younger people. It is only natural 
for some of us to fall into this temptation through our very 



SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 65 

eagerness to help those who are stumbling along in the be- 
ginnings of a Christian life. Children are often sinned against 
in this way, and there are many young people who have been 
driven away by the overzealous influence of friends who used 
methods that caused the will to stiffen in opposition to the 
Christian life. There are others who yielded to the pressure 
of a masterful personality, but have never developed strength 
of character and an independent personal relationship with Jesus 
Christ. We are responsible not only for the people we win by 
our message, but for the people we drive away, especially when 
they turn away because we have intruded on the sacred rights of 
their personalities. 

(8) Human help can only be given by clearing away mental diffi- 
culties, pressing the claims of Christ on the life, and the necessity 
for living not unto self but unto Him. The real battle with the 
will must be entered into by a person alone with God, where 
God does His own pleading and we can help only through 
intercession. In all earnestness, though, we must inspire the 
individual to face the lonely struggle with a determined heart 
and do conclusive thinking, for as Maltbie Babcock once pointed 
out: "To wish and not to will is spiritual collapse, a house on 
the sand." Weeks, months, and years may pass before we see 
the full answer to our prayer. After ten years of refusal to 
yield to the claims of Christ, a college woman said to the friend 
who had prayed for her all that time: "Don't ever give any 
one up. Your patience and unwavering confidence kept me 
discontented all these years and brought me to Christ." 

(9) Let us guard sacredly all confidences intrusted to our keep- 
ing. Be the most loyal, trustworthy friend and let no lurking 
desire for vainglory or success as a Christian worker tempt us 
to use that which has been deposited with us as messengers of 
God. This is merely the etiquette of loyal friendship. All 
personal self-revelation is made in the sweet liberty and se- 
clusion of trust and loyalty and one may not betray that con- 
fidence without shattering the very ideal that made it possible. 



66 SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 

BIBLE STUDY VIII 
Christian Comradeship 

I. The promise. 

Read Matt. 18 : 19, 20. These words of our Lord were spoken in the 
midst of His teaching about forgiveness and the importance of winning 
back a brother who had forfeited comradeship through a sin against his 
friend. The words of the promise to the two who agree indicate a power 
in spiritual fellowship beyond what we think. The spirit that makes us 
one with God makes us one with others, and the nearer we are to Him the 
nearer we are to one another. Jesus teaches us that oneness with others 
is so important that we must do all in our power to restore broken relation- 
ships, and that He cares so much that the two or three should be in spiri- 
tual fellowship that He is always there in their midst. What is it that 
usually makes it hard to carry out this teaching? In what ways do we 
grow spiritually if we follow it ? 

II. The illustration. 

Read Luke 24 : 13-25. In this story of the two disciples who were 
sharing their common convictions and questions, we find Jesus drawing 
near and walking along with them, according to His promise, although they 
did not at first recognize Him. Comradeship in spiritual life is necessary 
for a fuller revelation of God. When we are one with God and one with 
His children the circuit is complete. The relationship between God and 
my life is only complete when I am one with another life and say 'Our 
Father." In like manner my relation with the life of another is only com- 
plete when God is included in it. The comradeship of the two disciples 
brought unexpected results, (a) The immediate presence of Jesus Christ 
caused their hearts to "burn within" them, verse 32. (6) The meaning of 
their experiences and relationship to Christ was made plain to their il- 
lumined hearts, verse 27. (c) Their eyes were opened so that they knew 
Him, verse 31. 

Notice the exquisite delicacy of our Lord in waiting for the invitation to 
"abide" with His disciples. See verse 28. "He made as though he would 
go further, and they constrained him, saying, Abide with us." He purposed 
to reveal Himself but waited for their whole-hearted willingness to take 
Him into the intimacy of their fellowship. 

III. Some general principles. 

(1) In all spiritual comradeship take into account the truth that is al- 
ready accepted by the one whom we would help. Read Acts 26 : 2-3, 
25-27. Note the tact with which Paul takes for granted that Agrippa 
has done some thinking and is not unfamiliar with his message. He se- 
cures the king's intellectual co-operation at the outset. What quality 
enables us to adapt ourselves to others and understand their point of view ? 

Read Luke 10 : 25-28. Here Jesus calls out in the lawyer what he al- 
ready knows until he stands self -judged. The truth to which one' is al- 
ready committed in belief must be lived out before one can be trusted with 
new truth. How much of truth about God can we usually take for granted 



SPIRITUAL COMRADESHIP 67 

in dealing with the average person? What is the advantage of getting 
them to state it? 

(2) We need to reverence human personality wherever we find it. Read 
Acts 10 : 25-29. In what ways do we need to learn to-day the lesson 
Peter learned about Cornelius? How big is our world of human sym- 
pathies ? How many nationalities do we accept as comrades ? How many 
different social types of our own nationality do we treat as brothers? 

Read Matt. 18 : 10 and John 4 : 27. What is the limit of our real sym- 
pathy? Does it extend to every little one who is a child of our Father? 
If not, why not ? How far are we inhibited by the conventional standards 
of other people from sympathizing with social types different from our 
own? See Matt. 11 : 19 and Matt. 9 : 11, 12. Do we let the position of 
other people affect our interest in their spiritual welfare? Are we as in- 
terested in obscure people as in those of social position? 

(3) We must take into account the time element in growing characters. 
Read Mark 4 : 26-28. Character-making is a process involving both 
hope and discouragement. Why are we so impatient and ungenerous to- 
ward young Christians? What is a cure for this? On what should we 
base our comradeship with them ? When we look at others we are tempted 
to see only the points where they come short of us. If we look at Christ 
we then see where we come short of Him and this begets in us a sympathy 
for others who come short. At this point real comradeship is possible, for 
it must be based on an understanding sympathy. 



CHAPTER IX 
RELEASING SPIRITUAL ENERGY 

We have been discerning the natural ways in which our 
minds react instinctively toward religious influences, and we 
have come to know some secrets of failure and success in work- 
ing with people. There yet remains one factor in success with- 
out which all skill in dealing rationally with the mind counts for 
little. It concerns the releasing of spiritual energy, the link- 
ing of human strength with the infinite strength of the living 
God. The great tasks facing humanity demand more than 
human power to accomplish them. This is because God as 
Solomon said, "hath set eternity in their heart" (Eccles. 3:11) 
and what we do here in this fleeting life has a significance in the 
life to come. Therefore we dare not attempt our work with 
human strength alone; we must claim our privilege as children 
of God of opening ourselves consciously to His influence, that 
His power may flow through us. 

It is this art of opening ourselves consciously to God's in- 
fluence and helping our friends to do it that brings about the 
miracle of all time; that our God who dwells "in the high and 
holy place" enters in to dwell also "with him that is of a hum- 
ble and contrite heart." As naturally as the oxygen we breathe 
into our lungs purifies our blood, so will God transform the life 
that is open to Him. There are two ways in which God can 
gain access to a heart: either by the direct response of a per- 
son in answer to His voice, or by the response of that heart to 
some human friend in whom He is living in power. There are 
many people whose hearts are closed to the great Friend but 
open to their human friends. To such the flesh is more real 
than the spirit and their human relationships are, for practical 
purposes, nearer and dearer than their kinship with God. 
Therefore God must use the voice of some friend to whom their 
hearts are open until under the persuasion of that friend they 



SPIRITUAL ENERGY 69 

open their hearts directly to God and become His children in 
spirit and fellowship as well as His by creation. When we 
realize that God in His infinite eagerness to speak to His children 
has no other approach to many people than through a human 
friend, then we will begin to see the sin of thwarting, consciously, 
God's purposes toward our friend and we will be willing to 
let Him use us. This will impel us to turn to intercessory prayer 
as a great means of freeing the energy of God in the life of a 
friend. 

It is the conviction of all those who have had largest experi- 
ence in Christian service that the practice of intercessory prayer 
has been an essential factor to success. We are all familiar with 
the habit of prayer as it relates to our personal needs and to the 
worship of God; but an honest scrutiny is likely to show that 
the ministry of intercession has a small place in the daily life. 
This would not continue to be true if we would give ourselves 
to a study of this most important subject, the neglect of which 
is responsible for so much ineffective Christian living. 

It is possible to do a human work with a human power but 
it is impossible to do a superhuman work without superhuman 
power. The indwelling of the Spirit of Christ in the life of an 
individual, cleansing, transforming, and energizing that life by 
the imparting of a divine life, is indeed a miracle wrought by 
God. We are intrusted with the power of intercessory prayer 
that we may connect ourselves with the Divine energy and 
co-operate with God in applying it to the life of the individual. 
Our responsibility for this is all the greater when we remember 
that our Lord not only gave long hours to intercession but called 
his disciples to it as a method of spiritual achievement. 

It is not our purpose to discuss the philosophy of prayer in 
this chapter. The Bibliography at the end includes books 
that deal with that fully. It is sufficient that we keep in mind 
the conclusion that Professor James reports after his exhaustive 
study of religious experiences when he says: "Prayer or inner 
communion with the spirit thereof — be that spirit 'God' or 
'law' — is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual 
energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, 
within the phenomenal world'' (James's Varieties of Religious 
Experience, p. 485). A correct theory of the philosophy of 
prayer, however, will not lead one necessarily to pray. It is 
the convincing evidence of experience that we need. And our 



70 SPIRITUAL ENERGY 

experience will bring light just in proportion as we see the 
underlying principles and use them as a working basis. The 
immediate aim in this chapter is merely to suggest a few rea- 
sons why we should recognize intercessory prayer as necessary 
in any effort to win disciples and to point out some facts that 
condition its working. 

(1) Intercessory prayer kills selfishness in us and reveals the 
sincerity of our interest in people. In no other way can hidden 
motives and ambitions be so easily sifted and purified. In it 
we focus the desires of our heart for the good of another. Our 
concern for some one else makes us lose sight of ourselves and 
therefore forces us to serve. The positive desire that God will 
reveal Himself to the one for whom we pray is in itself a dynamic 
in us that powerfully expresses itself through our personal 
influence. There are many of us who will never be able to 
help another until we desire to do so with all our heart. Un- 
selfishness is the price of power. 

(2) Such prayer quickens love in us. The yearning for others 
makes them sacred to us and links us with God in His fatherly 
eagerness to bless His children. In counting surely upon His 
love for them we ourselves grow in love. We all know how this 
principle was urged by Christ when He made it possible for us 
to obey the command "Love your enemies" by adding another 
to it: "Pray for them that persecute you." Love is the power 
that draws one to God and we too can only help in drawing 
others to Him as we love. 

(3) We need to use intercession also to be made sensitive and 
susceptible to the needs of others. In the light of God's presence 
we see things in true perspective and form right judgments. 
We see what others may be when God possesses them fully 
and we carry this ideal for them in our hearts. When our 
spirits are prepared for service through prayer a spirit of ex- 
pectancy and watchfulness for God's leadings possesses us. We 
see our natural opportunities more easily and we have a keener 
sense of dependence on God. 

(4) Intercessory prayer is the best way to gain a spiritual 
point of contact with the one we would help. It saves us from in- 
truding. If we are led to pray intensely for some one else we 
may expect that God will create in that other heart a sense of 
need. As we draw near that one our prepared spirit will invite 
trust and confidence and before we know it we will find our- 



SPIRITUAL ENERGY 71 

selves speaking out of the abundance of our heart. We have 
a right to expect that God will bring about natural opportunities 
for personal help if we are ready for them and alert to use them. 
We probably have many more direct chances to talk with others 
about God than we suspect. They are passed by because 
through lack of intercession our hearts were not eager and 
quick to see. We ought to deal reverently with the thoughts 
of others that flitter into our minds. Perhaps when we know 
the laws of the spiritual world better we will find that these 
promptings are 'given us by the Spirit of God to call us to 
prayer because He desires to use us to help these friends in some 
way. They may, at that very moment, be needing us. It' 
was when Peter was in prayer that he was prepared by a vision 
to respond to the need of Cornelius, whose messengers were 
already nearing his door. (Acts 10 : 9-17.) If we believe that 
God can touch a heart at all we must believe that He can bring 
the heart that needs Him into relation with some one who can 
give that help. 

Intercession is not an effort to overcome any reluctance of 
God to help those who need Him, for He is ever yearning to 
reveal Himself to His children. Intercession is not importunate 
asking, but the whole-hearted co-operation of mind and spirit 
in the purpose to be a channel of life and power. It is the 
sympathetic partnership which releases a divine force operat- 
ing through natural laws. We must not forget the fact that 
"we love because God first loved us." 

When we study prayer as a working force we will come to see 
that it is released only on certain conditions: 

(1) Intercession demands the subordination of all desires to 
the will of God. The spirit of Christ in Gethsemane must 
ever be ours. "Father, all things are possible unto thee: 
howbeit not what I will but what thou wilt" (Mark 14 : 36). 
Do not dictate times or terms to God. Many prayers cannot 
be answered until certain experiences have been worked out in 
the life of the one for whom we pray. Sometimes God means 
to give " beyond what we ask or think, " and to do this requires 
time. George Matheson, in commenting on apparently un- 
answered prayers, says: "There are some prayers which are 
followed by a divine silence because we are not yet ripe for all 
we have asked; there are others which are so followed because 
we are ripe for more. We do not always know the full strength, 



72 SPIRITUAL ENERGY 

of our own capacity; we have to be prepared for receiving 
greater blessings than we ever dreamed of. We come to the 
door of the sepulchre and beg with tears the dead body of 
Jesus. We are answered by silence because we are to get some- 
thing better — a living Lord." 

(2) A life obedient to the commands of God is necessary if the 
life-giving power of the Holy Spirit is to be imparted. " The Holy 
Spirit," we are told, God hath given "to them that obey him" 
(Acts 5 : 32). The fact is that our moral life is the source 
of all prayer. As we are so we pray. All our real desires 
affect our prayer. We cannot be petty and critical in heart, 
and yet pray with intense yearning and love for others; we 
cannot be fretted and full of complaint and utter the prayer 
of faith. We must first face in God's presence the condi- 
tion of our heart before we can expect to intercede with 
power. 

(3) Intercessory prayer for another does not interfere With the 
free will and choice of the one for whom we pray. Prayer creates 
an atmosphere in which it is easier for the Spirit of God to in- 
terpret Christ to the human heart. It suggests God to the 
mind and brings about conditions in which God can especially 
press his claims. But the response must be voluntary and 
spontaneous. " Ye shall seek and find me, when ye shall search 
for me with all your heart" (Jer. 29 : 13). 

(4) Our Lord places a special value on the united prayer of 
two or three who are drawn together for the purpose of intercession. 
Perhaps it is because two persons are not likely to be drawn to- 
gether in prayer for a selfish purpose, and so being in accor- 
dance with the will of God are able to prevail in prayer. We 
Christians would do well to study the promise of Matt. 18 : 19, 
20 and resolutely meet the condition of united intercession and 
have fulfilled to us the answer — the presence of Christ, and the 
granted petition. 

"The weary ones had rest, the sick had joy that day 
And wondered how — 
The ploughman singing at his work had prayed: 
'God help them now/ 

"Alone in foreign lands, they wondered how 
Their feeble words had power — 
At home the Christians, two or three had met 
To pray an hour. 



SPIRITUAL ENERGY 73 

'So we are always wondering, wondering long, 

Because we do not see 
Some one, unknown, perhaps, and far away, 

On bended knee." 



BIBLE STUDY IX 
Prayer 

I. The influence of the example. 

Read Luke 11 : 1-13. What was there about the life of Jesus that led 
His disciples to say: "Lord, teach us to pray"? The disciples must have 
felt some great unseen influence at work when they were in the presence 
of their Master after these times of prayer. It must have made them feel 
conscious of their spiritual poverty as nothing else. Their desire to be 
taught was in itself the beginning of the true spirit of prayer and was the 
spontaneous expression of the heart of a little child which is the condition 
of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. 

II. The method and underlying principles, verses 2-4. 

What are the marks of its social teaching? What fundamental rela- 
tionships are mentioned in the prayer? Why are we taught to ask God to 
measure His forgiveness of us by the measure of our forgiveness of others ? 
If we honestly utter that petition, what will it involve in our life ? How 
does Matt. 18 : 21-35 illustrate this petition? What reason is given in 
Matt. 5 : 44, 45 (first clause) why we should forgive? How does this 
principle of forgiving love make us one with the whole world? 

III. The reasonableness of prayer, verses 5-13. 

The argument from human experience. If an unwilling friend will 
arise in the night and give, is not God better than this grudging friend? 
(verses 5-10). If a parent gives to a child when it asks, is not God better 
than a fallible parent? (verses 11, 12). "If ye then know how, . . . how 
much more shall your heavenly Father give?" Our belief in prayer is 
dependent on our belief in our heavenly Father. What kind of a God is 
your God? Is He merely a Creator or is He also a Father? 

"For the love of God is broader 
Than the measure of man's mind, 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind. 
If our love were but more simple 
We should take Him at His word, ' 
And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the sweetness of our Lord." 

(Faber.) 

IV. The relation of our Lord's prayer to the spirit of intercession. 

Can we pray the first three petitions of the Lord's prayer without 

gutting our lives into the answer? Why is intercession for others the 
ighest form of prayer? Intercessory prayer is commanded by Christ 



74 SPIRITUAL ENERGY 

and strengthened by His own example. "Pray for them that persecute 
you" (Matt. 5 : 44), and "The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers 
are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth 
laborers into his harvest" (Matt. 9 : 37, 38). We cannot turn away 
lightly from the power of that intercession of Jesus as we read His prayer in 
the seventeenth chapter of John. In fact, we cannot think of our Lord 
as detached from this big suffering world of need but as yearning to see its 
complete redemption; as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it: 
"He ever liveth to make intercession for us" (Heb. 7 : 25). 
It is significant that Luke, in his account of Jesus' teaching concerning 

Erayer, emphasizes the gift of the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer. See 
iuke 11 : 13. We are told also in Romans 8 : 26 that the "Spirit helpeth 
our infirmity, for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit 
. . . maketh intercession for us" and "he maketh intercession for the 
saints according to the will of God." It is an unspeakable comfort to 
know that in this great work of intercession we are not left alone, but are 
to be guided "into all the truth" by the Spirit and that He is to "teach 
you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I (Christ) said unto 
you" (John 14 : 26). 

Questions for Thought 
How is intercession a discipline in unselfishness? How does it affect 
the horizon of our life? How does it affect our service for others? Ami 
prepared to pay the cost of intercessory prayer for those whom God re- 
lates to my fife? I can do a human service for some one with a human 
power; I can do a divine service for some one only with divine power. 
Am I willing to meet the tests in order to have that divine power? 

"We shall not have to talk so much to others if we pray more for them. 
We talk and do not influence, or we influence only for a time, because our 
lives are not more prayer-full. . . . Talking may be a great snare when it 
takes the place of prayer — and how easily it does! It is easier to talk 
with a man than to pray for him — in many cases" (Forbes Robinson's 
Letters, pages 95 and 105). 



CHAPTER X 

THE PROBLEM OF THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 

The nominal Christian presents the dreary spectacle of ar- 
rested development. One sees many such. The life history 
of each is ordinarily the same. As children their hearts are 
sensitive to the call of Jesus and respond gladly. Later, dur- 
ing the years of adolescence, the relationship to God becomes 
more clearly defined and they gladly acknowledge Christ as 
Saviour and enter the fellowship of the church. Then usually 
follows a time of eager devotion and loyalty. The life of such 
a person seems so vigorous and full of promise. Then with 
irresistible force the responsibilities, opportunities, temptations, 
and complex interests of adult life take possession of the un- 
tested Christian. At the same time they are likely to go away 
from home for business or college and are cut off from the in- 
spirations and counsel of trusted, tried friends who have always 
held them true to the ideal. Then it is that any one of a num- 
ber of causes weakens the strength of the vital life. Its power, 
joy, and God-consciousness dwindle and cease to meet the heart's 
need. Such Christians see the unreality of this inner life 
and conclude that what was one time a conscious reality of 
the spiritual life was merely the unthinking enthusiasm of child- 
hood and not possible for the sophisticated adult. They re- 
solve to be honest, at any rate, and not play the part of a hypo- 
crite by clinging to the form when the reality is gone. Little 
by little church attendance and Christian service are stopped, 
and they frankly mingle their lives with the motley throng of 
those whose lives are like that described in the words: 

"I lived for myself, I thought for myself, 
For myself and none beside; 
Just as if Jesus had never lived, 
And as if He had never died." 

One who would help in winning back to Christ the sincere 
loyalty of these nominal Christians must grapple with the causes 
which lie back of this arrested development. Briefly, the more 

75 



76 THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 

common of these causes might be summed up in the words — 
starvation, suffocation, disobedience, and bewilderment. 

The process of starving the spiritual life is a simple one. In 
gradually giving less attention to what are sometimes called 
"the means of grace" the life inevitably loses its vitality. Be- 
fore they know it some Christians become thoughtless toward 
God and their moral responsibilities. They drift away, not 
through deliberate sin but through neglect. They have be- 
come enamoured of distracting pleasures and "follow the crowd" 
with no sense of moral purpose, and do not even realize the 
receding of their Christ, who used to be a near Companion. 
Such people are rarely quickened except by some shock which 
shatters their day-dreams and brings them face to face with 
their elemental needs. 

One of the blessed uses of suffering is that it keeps us alive. 
Just as the burn of the finger keeps the child from destroying its 
hand in a flame, so God uses the earthquakes and fire of our 
daily experience to keep us from spiritual stupor. Sometimes 
failure in business, an accident or loss of a friend, or a cruel dis- 
appointment are the only means that will lead the nominal 
Christian to crave God anew. If so, then the friend who would 
help must stand by in patience and prayer and friendliness 
waiting for a sense of need in the life of that friend. Then it 
will be possible to interpret the earthquake and fire as the pre- 
lude to that "still small voice" of God who longs to reveal Him- 
self to-day to His children just as He did at that historic mo- 
ment of Elijah's life. But one need not always wait for these 
hard experiences to come before help can be given. Often the 
necessary shock can be given by a straight, true word spoken in 
love and intense earnestness. One day one of those thoughtless 
Christians, already in the forties, was telling a Christian friend 
of her position in a school where, she said, she had come to 
know well more than nine hundred girls during the years she 
had been there living with them for nine months of the year. 
Her friend exclaimed: "Oh, what opportunities you have had 
for giving them ideals!" "Weals? Not I," she said gayly. 
"I merely enjoy their company and do not bother about their 
morals or manners." Very suddenly her friend turned and said: 
"I shouldn't like to be in your place — suppose Jesus Christ 
should come and expect an accounting from you to-morrow ! 
You know I can't get away from those words: 'Every one of us 



THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 77 

must give an account of himself to God.' " A silence fell be- 
tween them and they soon parted. Two days later the teacher 
came to her friend and said: "Please help me to find God — 
I've thought of nothing night or day but that line you quoted 
to me — my life has been so empty— and I cannot rest for 
thinking of the girls I might have helped. " It was the reveal- 
ing fire of God that brought her to a new sense of her responsi- 
bility to God and to His children, and the record of the years 
since have proved what one woman, in whose life God has the 
foremost place, can do for scores of girls who now look to her 
as their spiritual mother. And she often writes to her friend 
in words like these: "I can never cease to thank God that He 
gave you the courage to * stab my spirit broad awake. ' " 

Sometimes, too, we gain the chance to help the nominal Chris- 
tian to reality in the spiritual life by making sure that we ring 
true in little things — in some of the very ways where one's 
genuine sincerity can best be shown. It is generally little 
things that show up the chasm between the life that is genuine 
in its loyalty to Christ and the one €hat is nominal. At a sum- 
mer resort a girl slipped away each Sunday morning to a neg- 
lected little church for the service. Returning one day she 
met a gay friend who said: "Where have you been?" "Over 
to the little church beyond the meadow," the girl replied sim- 
ply. " To that pokey little place on this hot day ? You must 
be frightfully pious !" "Not at all, but I go because I couldn't 
get through the week without it. It helps to keep me re- 
minded, and I need it." The society friend looked at her curi- 
ously and said slowly: "Why, your religion must be actually 
real to you. I wish mine were." Then a natural opening for 
a friendship started which led the society girl into a renewal of 
her Christian life which has blessed multitudes through her 
Christian philanthropy and the application of the principles 
of Jesus Christ to the social problems of her father's industrial 
community. 

It is comparatively easy to gain opportunities to win back to 
reality those nominal Christians. One can reckon on a certain 
susceptibility to spiritual influence, for the chances are with 
most of them that their consciences are still pricking them 
occasionally. Crystal sincerity, courage, alertness, and the 
ringing true in little things will usually develop natural oppor- 
tunities for personal service beyond all that one could hope. 



78 THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 

After the opportunity for honest fellowship has come one 
must try to restore in the starved Christian the broken habits 
of the Christian life. Chief among these is secret prayer. 
Even on days when one does not feel inspired to pray, there 
is then all the more need to pray. The unvarying daily prac- 
tice of bowing in the presence of the heavenly Father and open- 
ing the heart in stillness that His Spirit may prepare it and 
steady it for the day's work will surely bring its reward. " Be 
still and know that I am God." 

Closely related to this is the strength that comes from 
church life and fellowship with other Christians. We owe 
more of our spiritual fibre to this than is commonly supposed. 
The study of the moral and religious conditions in pioneer 
towns where church fellowship is meagre brings out this fact, and 
vital Christianity dwindles. Close comradeship with those who 
lightly regard the claims of Jesus Christ usually saps the 
strength of the Christian. Then, too, the discipline of some bit 
of daily service for Christ's sake develops moral muscle. The 
world is so full of need that the true disciple cannot ignore it 
without suffering loss in those finer qualities of spirit. One 
of the chief causes of nominalism lies in the fact that Christians 
have been individualists and lived as though what they did was 
of no concern to society or as though they had no obligations to 
the social community. If they once were to begin to get under 
the burden of the whole community as if it were their own they 
could not be careless and thoughtless. The steady strain of 
Christlike service helps to keep one's feet on the earth and 
brings reality into one's vision. We should do everything in 
our power to supply the tonic of some definite service to the 
thoughtless Christian. It will work wonders. 

We must also help these friends by lure of some study of the 
Scriptures that will bring a daily moral challenge to them and 
compel them to test their life according to the teachings of 
Jesus. They will find, then, that His words are literally true. 
" The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are 
life" (John 6 : 63). 

As surely as the life is reconnected with these neglected 
sources of strength new vigor and reality will come, and it is 
by these means alone that the more subtle suffocating influences 
can be overcome. These influences are strong among a class 
of nominal Christians who could never be called thoughtless; 



THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 79 

but they are, nevertheless, a stumbling-block to the progress of 
the kingdom. They are not irresponsible people; they are 
those whose standards are blurred and who suffer from spiritual 
astigmatism. 

These people are described by our Lord in the parable of the 
seed falling into the ground in which there were thorns and 
briers (Mark 4 : 18, 19). In this He speaks plainly about 
those who had heard the word but have allowed it to become 
choked. Three causes are mentioned: first come the "cares 
of the world." Nothing could be more plausible. "Cares" 
are a part of a normal adult life and are given for the good of 
the individual. The wrong comes when nominal Christians 
allow themselves to be utterly absorbed by these cares. There 
is no time for God because all time is given to selfish interests. 
The temptation is so insinuating that the yielding comes al- 
most before one is aware of it. Religion becomes an opiate 
rather than a stimulant. The student has no time for spir- 
itual things because work is so pressing, the mother must 
care for her children, and the demands of business press on 
others. And yet it was to such that Jesus spake the words: 
"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and 
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of 
me." 

Closely related to " cares" comes the " deceitfulness of riches" 
— the self-indulgence and love of ease and the desire to sacri- 
fice everything for personal ambitions. And let us note that 
this is no more true of the rich person who has gained possession 
of riches than it is of the poor person whose heart is set on the 
same goal. All these things tend to sap the spiritual vigor, and 
the spirit is not at leisure from itself to worship the Father and 
to grow in grace. The spiritual life is only victorious when the 
Christian, conquering the temptation of riches, uses them to 
serve higher ends as a means for the larger service for the king- 
dom. 

The third cause of suffocation is described by the phrase 
"the desires of other things" — the selfish purposes that have 
crowded out the purpose of living for Christ which they once 
had. The ambition for popularity, a career, social success, 
anything that diverts the attention from the supreme end of 
life and hinders Christ from carrying out His gracious purposes 
in us. 



80 THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 

"The Lord Christ wanted a tongue one day 

To speak a message of cheer 
To a heart that was weary and worn and sad, 

And weighed with a mighty fear. 
He asked me for mine, but 'twas busy quite 
With my own affairs from morn till night. 

"The Lord Jesus wanted a hand one day 

To do a loving deed; 
He wanted two feet, on an errand for Him 

To run with gladsome speed. 
But I had need of my own that day; 
To His gentle beseeching I answered, 'Nay!' 

"So all that day I used my tongue, 

My hands, and my feet as I chose; 
I said some hasty, bitter words 

That hurt one heart, God knows. 
I busied my hands with worthless play, 
And my wilful feet went a crooked way. 

"And the dear Lord Christ — was His work undone 
For lack of a willing heart? 
Only through men does He speak to men ! 

Dumb" must He be apart! 
I do not know, but I wish to-day 
I had let the Lord Christ have His way." 

(Alice J, Nichols.) 

The precise counsel that these people need is help in finding 
a true perspective. They usually want a deeper spiritual life, 
but seem caught in the mesh of legitimate cares until they be- 
come unfruitful in the life of the spirit. To get a true perspec- 
tive they need first to be led to give God the full control of all 
the details of their life — to begin to make Him their first con- 
fidant and not merely a refuge in an emergency. Instead of 
making their decisions according to what other people are 
doing or think it right to do, they need to be helped to look at 
their daily life of duties, resources, and privileges in the light 
of the prayer: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" They 
also need to be shown how to begin to practise the habit of 
counselling with Him about the daily needs. They will then 
find a new perspective for their life as they practise the presence 
of God. In the end there will come a new sense of relative 
values that will bring liberty and poise and the release of latent 
power that will drive anxiety, depression, and the fear of nervous 



THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 81 

prostration from their experience. No witness to the reality of 
the presence of God could be plainer than to find Him as the 
centre of control in the lives of busy people who show forth 
the joy of a full service of God, revealing Him to be their great 
Friend and not a hard taskmaster. 

Another important cause of nominalism remains yet to be 
stated. It is that subtle paralysis that creeps into the life as a 
result of unconquered sin. Perhaps it may be that the nominal 
Christian has failed to understand and use the laws that bring 
victory over temptation and is discouraged by repeated fail- 
ures to live true to the heart's purpose. Or the ugliness of sin 
may be veiled by attractive excuses so that the desire to resist 
is half-hearted or gone. 

The one who would help such imprisoned spirits must under- 
stand the seat of the difficulty which finds its cause in an inert 
will. Such people are naturally weak in will-power and in 
moral decision of character, or they may be so strong in will 
that they are stubborn and inhibited by pride from yielding to 
God's Spirit. If the person is weak in will, a strong friend can 
legitimately use personal influence to help them to be true to 
their awakening conscience. The result of squaring oneself 
with one's conscience will bring a new vigor into life that will 
help a person another time to do the right on their own volition. 
An instance of this was found in the life of a girl who had yielded 
to the temptation to steal a treasured book from a friend's 
house several years before and had from that time on given up 
her Christian life. Under the influence of a Christian friend 
who in ignorance of the cause for her indifference was urging her 
to renew her Christian life, she said: "Oh, I used to be a real 
Christian like you, but it has ceased to be real to me since I was 
fifteen years old." " When did you first lose your sense of God ? 
What caused it?" came the questions. Whereupon, as she 
told how she had stolen the book, it developed that, although 
she knew the cause all along, her will had been too weak for years 
to make the matter right with God and her conscience. The 
next day, under the influence of her friend, who handed her note- 
paper and a pen, in her presence she wrote a letter to the one 
she had wronged confessing her fault and assuring her of the 
return of the book by the next mail. Her friend went with her 
to mail the letter in the box and stood by her in faithfulness. 
The result was that the inertia of years was overcome and God 



82 THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 

became so real to her that she was from that day able to grow 
in moral decision of character. 

To a stubborn nature the appeal to the will for decision is 
the line of greatest resistance and is not usually successful. 
Such people are more easily won through their affections. 
They will find it easy to do anything for one whom they love. 
They need to be shown the love of God who yearns now over 
His disobedient children as in the days of old when He pled 
with His people: "Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? or a 
land of thick darkness? Wherefore say my people: 'We are 
broken loose; we will come no more unto thee.'" They 
need to see the pathos of a strong nature resisting the gentle 
Spirit of God, who longs to purify them and lead them back 
into peace and power. They also need to be appealed to by a 
challenge to their sense of pride in being honorable with God 
and facing things squarely and ceasing to be a sham. Slowly 
but surely this kind of appeal will bring a response from such 
Christians, and what was one time stubbornness will become 
a strong will nerved for any task and real spiritual conquest. 
This type of nominal Christian makes the finest kind of Chris- 
tian worker when once guided back to a true life. 

One more cause of nominalness should be considered. It is 
that sense of mental bewilderment that exists largely because 
of an inadequate or fantastic conception of God. The crude 
religious ideas of childhood may never have been changed. 
Parents, Sunday-school teachers, and ministers may have 
taken for granted that the young Christian would have the 
right conception of God, without intelligent guidance, and so 
wonder why there is so little interest in the Christian life. 
Many a student has found that mental integrity forbids further 
belief in their childish ideas of God and yet has not discovered 
an honest basis for faith in the conception of God as revealed 
by Jesus Christ. These intellectual difficulties will be dis- 
cussed more fully in another chapter, but their relation to the 
problem of the nominal Christian is often a real one. The 
sense of bewilderment may often come because of a misunder- 
standing of the relation of God to the sorrows of life. Here 
again the true conception of God is warped in that He seems 
cruel and far away from the distress of His children. Thus 
it is that bitterness of heart and estrangement from Him 
creep in. 



THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 83 

The experience of the nominal Christian is never a happy 
one. 

"For, oh, the Master is so fair, 
His smile so sweet to banished men, 
That they who meet it unawares 
Can never rest on earth again." 

One can always count upon the memory of past trust and 
knowledge of God as an ally in trying to help these friends back 
to Him. They are naturally discontented and restless be- 
cause they have once known the joys of Christian life. Their 
potential value to the kingdom of God is great and from them 
should be recruited scores of ardent workers for Jesus Christ. 
Like the story of the debtors in the parable, they love much 
because they have been forgiven much. It is well to devote 
much prayer and energy to this work, for it is the Christian in 
name only that is the greatest stumbling-block to unbelievers. 
Still, God can do to-day what he has been doing for centuries 
past; He still works transformations through the power of 
His Spirit. 

"I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean: 
from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse 
you. . . . And I will multiply you the fruit of the tree, and 
the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more the 
reproach of famine among the nations" (Ezek. 36 : 25-30). 



BIBLE STUDY X 

The Problem of Arrested Development 

Read Luke 8 : 4-15. Four kinds of soil into which the seed of the truth 
of God falls. 

(1) The wayside, verses 5, 12. Here the seed cannot take root because 
the mind has become the common runway for so many ideas and impres- 
sions that it is impervious to anything. Therefore the seed is spirited 
away. See Heb. 3 : 13 for one cause of the hardening process. 

What are the chief causes of mental atrophy to-day? Why is super- 
ficial, cosmopolitan living such a menace to the growth of the spirit? 
How can we keep from mental insensibility? Are we responsible for 
keeping our spirits sensitive? Have I been used to thanking God that 
things touch me deeply? Is it possible to educate the conscience into a 
sense of moral responsibility? 

(2) The rocky ground, verses 6, 13. Here the word is received with joy 
but withers because there is no root. They "for a while believe," but 
wither under testing. There is great danger if we have a restricted area 



84 THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN 

in our hearts not subjected to the ploughing of God's Spirit. Having 
reservations from God is a menace to our future and to our power of 
retaining even the little life that was a joy to us. We need to let God apply 
to our hearts the message of Jer. 23 : 29 and Ezek. 36 : 26 and I Peter 
1 : 5-7, in which God's truth, God's Spirit, and God's discipline are the 
means of preparing the ground of the heart for the life of the seed. How 
far are we responsible for producing nominal Christians by inadequate 
teaching and preparation of the soil for the planting of the truth ? How 
do we fail people by not ploughing deep ? In what ways will our relations 
with those we would help be different if we have this in mind? 

(3) The seed falling among thorns, verses 7, 14. The ground is prepared 
and rich but it needs the weeding and pruning and gardening of God's 
Spirit; therefore, "as they go on their way" the "thorns choke," i. e., cares, 
riches, and pleasures of this life. Many of them are legitimate interests 
but used for our own way. The secret of failure lies in a lack of purpose and 
focus of all powers on a life to be lived "no longer unto themselves but 
unto him" (II Cor. 5 : 15 and Romans 15 : 3). How soon in Christian ex- 
perience ought this full dedication to come ? Is it easier before or after 
a growing acquaintance with God as a Friend? Ought we to be content 
with merely helping one to a beginning of acquaintance with Him ? What 
connection has service with the development of purpose? 

(4) The seed on the good ground, verses 8, 15. Here the secret is the 
honest and good heart which holds the truth fast and brings forth fruit with 
patience. This involves a right attitude of sincerity, will-power, and a 
vision of the goal that helps one to have patience. Therefore, in any 
constructive help that we give to nominal Christians we must seek to 
develop: (a) moral sensitiveness, (6) a spirit that regards weaknesses 
and besetting sins as special opportunities for the showing of God's power, 
(c) a purpose to give Jesus Christ the foremost place and to deny self the 
right to reign, (d) honesty and a willingness to let the truth go deep, and 
patience with oneself in fruit-bearing. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE APPROACH TO THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

A discerning Japanese Christian said recently that one of 
the surprising peculiarities about Americans was the fact 
that we used the word Christian as though it were an adjective 
instead of a noun. It is only too true. We think of non- 
Christians as living in the Orient, but many of us would shrink 
from the apparent discourtesy of labelling any of our friends 
in this country non-Christians. The irresistible influence of 
Jesus Christ has entered into our whole social fabric, and 
people unconsciously have taken Christian ideals as the only 
possible ones for well-bred people, and they conform to their 
standards outwardly, often from sheer necessity, because the 
ideals of the world are, after all, the ideals of Jesus Christ. 
But it is as true to-day as it was in the days of old when it was 
said: " This people draw near me with their lips but their hearts 
are far from me" and "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." 
The weary-eyed, anxious faces of men and women all about us 
tell us only too plainly that they have never heard personally 
the invitation of Christ: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"; or if they have heard 
it they have not accepted it nor found their life in Him as 
Christians. They are all about us — these non-Christians, un- 
related to Jesus Christ, like withered branches that are severed 
from the vine. The pathos of our American brand of non- 
Christians lies in the fact that they starve with food in sight 
while the non-Christians of the Orient starve without food in 
sight. 

When we try to get at the heart of the matter we see that in 
the case of a non-Christian the habitual attitude of mind and 
heart is that of unbelief in the message of Jesus Christ and its 
personal significance. This unbelief may be the inheritance of 
centuries or it may have crystallized from the experiences of a 

85 



86 THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

short lifetime or it may be the mere willingness to go on living 
without any personal knowledge of God. To such people the 
story of Jesus Christ as the gift of God to men is merely a beauti- 
ful tale to tell children and not a challenge to their adult life. 
There is no conscious sense of relationship with a heavenly 
Father; the connection is cut and they are, as Paul says, " with- 
out hope and without God in the world." 

There are certain causes which lie back of a state of unbelief 
and which must be dealt with if we are to be of service. 

(1) Simple ignorance of the true character of God as revealed by 
the life of Jesus Christ is responsible for much unbelief. If one 
realized the love of our heavenly Father and the priceless value 
of our lives in His sight as shown by the sacrificed life of His 
Son that we might have life through Him, it would not be 
possible to be unreceiving in heart and mind. 

"Oh, could I tell ye surely would receive it; 
Oh, could I show you what mine eyes have seen; 
How can ye know and how can ye receive it; 
How — till He bringeth you where I have been?" 

The only remedy for ignorance is knowledge, and that knowledge 
comes through the study of the life of Christ in the gospels and 
the interpretation of that life and its principles in the epistles. 
Persuade the unbeliever to begin a study of one of the gos- 
pels to discover the true nature of the heavenly Father and the 
teaching of Christ. It may not be willingness but facts that 
he needs. "The same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all 
that call upon him. . . . How then shall they call on him in 
whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in 
him whom they have not heard ? . . . So belief cometh of hear- 
ing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Romans 10 : 12-17). 

(2) Prejudice is the close friend of ignorance. Prejudice is 
ignorance confirmed by some experience. Perhaps, as a child, 
the non-Christian was taught some crude notion of God that 
contradicted the instincts of the heart and quenched the de- 
sire for God. Or, as often happens, the only zealous Christian 
one has known may have been some one whose life did not 
square with the teachings of Christ. There are also many red- 
blooded non-Christians who have become so as a protest against 
some barren, anaemic, contracted ideal of life that was set forth 
as the only model Christian life. They mistake one instance for 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN 87 

a principle and judge by the crudities of discipleship rather than 
by the teaching of Jesus Christ. Such prejudices are only dis- 
placed by other normal experiences that gain control over the 
affections. We must challenge such people to judge the case 
for Jesus Christ by going straight to His teachings and forming 
an honest judgment. 

In working with people who have been born in lands under 
the sway of non-Christian religions, the element of prejudice 
bulks large. It takes months and years often to overcome it 
by building up confidence through friendship with them and 
through the new ideas that are developed by Christian educa- 
tion. It is not easy for one who has been bound by the tradi- 
tions of many centuries suddenly to become open-minded to 
new truth. The process is simpler if one can find some common 
meeting-ground and discover elements in the past inheritance 
that will form a background for the new teaching. There are 
certain ethical teachings in every non-Christian religion that 
parallel certain Christian teachings. These can be taken as a 
starting-point for fuller revelation. 

(3) A failure to appreciate the true nature of sin is the root of 
much indifference and unbelief. Here one is prone to trust to 
relative values. For example, certain people are accustomed 
to look on others in whom they see sin and weakness and to say 
with complacency: " What a pity that they are so weak ! I am 
glad that I have too much self-respect to be like that." And 
even when looking on some very worthy earnest Christian they 
rejoice to discover some point of imperfection in which they feel 
superior to that servant of God. They console themselves with 
this evidence of discernment on their part while at the same 
time they fail to realize their own shortcomings. 

It is only when they realize that our holy God is a consum- 
ing fire, to "prove each man's work of what sort it is" (I Cor. 
3 : 13) and that "each one of us shall give an account of him- 
self to God" (Romans 14 : 12) that they are startled into the 
recognition of a personal responsibility to God that has hitherto 
been ignored. In this serious meditation it is well to recall 
Paul's words: "I judge not myself, for I know nothing against 
myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me 
is the Lord" (I Cor. 4:4). They can only come again to the 
teachings of Jesus Christ and let these reveal how great is each 
one's need and sin. These teachings will also reveal that the 



88 THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

greatest sin is that of unbelief and that the most sinful thing 
one can do is to refuse to let God into one's life. And in real- 
izing this they will begin to be aware of the working of the 
Holy Spirit who, as Jesus said, "will convict the world of sin, 
because they believe not on Me" (John 16 : 9). 

(4) A discouragement born of long-continued hopeless conflicts 
with the limitations, sins, failures, and weaknesses of one's life 
keeps many in a state of unbelief. It does not seem possible to 
them that God can transform the life when they themselves 
have tried so often and failed. They may have seen his mighty 
work in the life of another but are confident that these persons 
possessed more will-power at the start or had less to contend 
against and thus they could win an easy victory. And unfor- 
tunately there is much current teaching which would deceive 
people into believing that one attains righteousness by the 
works of the law instead of by the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. " By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that 
not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no 
man should glory" (Eph. 2 : 8, 9). 

We must patiently persuade these discouraged, unbelieving 
persons to give up the struggle and let God do for them what 
they cannot do for themselves. This involves the yielding of 
themselves to Him in faith that according to the promise of 
Christ He will free them from the burden of the unfulfilled re- 
quirement of accepted human laws and the moral claims of 
one's heart, and then indeed He will give rest. "Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you 
rest" (Matt. 11 : 28), "for apart from me ye can do nothing" 
(John 15 : 5). 

(5) A spiritjof fear holds many back from believing the message 
of Christ. They are usually persons of integrity of mind who 
realize that God's claims involve full surrender to His will 
and purposes and that no half-way position is possible. They 
also feel the tug of personal ambitions and unbelieving friends 
and a certain sense of prudence makes them cautious about 
entering upon a new and untried life where large issues are at 
stake. It is seemingly far simpler to go on walking alone by 
sight than to walk with God in faith and to take the risks of 
full obedience. These persons need to realize the infinite love 
of the compassionate Christ which casts out fear. They must 
be led to see that God never takes an unfair advantage of a 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN 89 

life intrusted to Him, but that "he that loseth his life for my 
[Christ's] sake shall find it" (Matt. 10 : 39). 

As soon as the cause that lies back of the unbelief is known 
one can begin from that starting-point to lead on into faith. 
A long first step is made when open-mindness is secured. 
That may come easily or with difficulty according to the tem- 
perament of the individual. Comradeship with a broad- 
minded, honest type of Christian may create a new hunger for 
God; a fresh interpretation of the teaching of Christ or hard 
experiences may make the heart susceptible to Him. There 
are probably all about us more open-minded unbelievers than 
we suspect whose hearts have been prepared through life ex- 
perience for our interpretation of Christ. For many reasons 
they are open-minded toward us, and it is our unspeakable 
privilege to help them to be open-minded toward God. If 
they can trust us why should we not help them to trust Him ? 
They need a sincere attitude of open-mindedness toward all 
possible light, and courage to face the cause of the unbelief and 
to have that cause removed by opening the heart to the in- 
fluence and teachings of Christ. An honest search for light 
will bring its own reward. Paul describes this attitude in the 
words: "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that 
ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect 
will of God" (Romans 12 : 2). It is also so simply stated by 
Jesus when He says: "Except ye turn and become as little 
children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven" 
(Matt. 18 : 3). By an act of the will we must become teach- 
able if we would know God. 

The next step into belief is to centre the attention upon Jesus 
Christ as the revelation of God to men. It is not Christianity 
but Christ with whom the individual has first to reckon. It 
is possible to talk for hours about the principles of Christianity 
without facing the claims of the personal Christ. The result 
of all conversation should be an increased God-consciousness, a 
deepened sense of moral responsibility to a living, personal God, 
and a growing appreciation of a possible personal relationship 
with Jesus Christ as the One through whom alone we can live a 
life in harmony with the purposes of God. 

"Christ, I am Christ's and let that name suffice you; 
Ay, for me, too, He hath greatly sufficed. 
Lo, with no winning words I would entice you; 
Paul has no honor, and no friend but Christ." 



90 THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

Having opened the mind to the teachings of Jesus, we must, 
with decision of character, resolve to obey all the truth that is 
made clear to the mind. Faithful obedience to the light al- 
ready given brings belief and more light. And each person 
has some light to follow. There is at least one teaching or 
command of Christ that the mind and conscience own to be 
reasonable and necessary. Let this be taken literally and 
obeyed implicitly and light and guidance will come inevitably 
from this doing of God's will. 

In the same way we must help people to begin to pray. 
Even though the mystery of prayer is not understood and ex- 
perience in answered prayer has been lacking, yet there is 
usually a recognition of the holiness, greatness, and infinite 
Fatherliness of the living God and one must acknowledge this 
by kneeling before Him in worship. Jesus said: "Pray to thy 
Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall 
recompense thee" (Matt. 6:6); and "Ask, and ye shall receive, 
that your joy may be made full" (John 16 : 24). An honest 
heart that truly desires to come into a knowledge of the heavenly 
Father must be willing to take the step of humbling oneself 
before Him and speaking to the One who, like the father in the 
parable, has been waiting for the child to come to himself and 
say in sincerity: "I will arise and go to my father." 

In beginning the habit of prayer it is a great help to commit 
to memory some of the prayer Psalms and make them a per- 
sonal prayer. Such Psalms as the 51st; 17:1-8; 42; 84; 90; 
103; 119 : 9-16, 57-64, 73-80, 121-130; 139; 141 are guides 
for the expression of the heart and teach one how to pray. 

We must remember that it is futile to attempt an answer to 
all questions concerning spiritual realities. The answers will 
come with growing experience; they are revealed as one goes on. 
In all our efforts to win others we need to shift the battle from 
the ground of mere discussion to an attack upon the citadel of 
the will. The truest help is given when one is shown how to 
take the next step toward God and the Christian life. A little 
child learns to walk not by being carried from room to room, 
but by tottering along with some friendly person near by to 
lift it to its feet when it stumbles. In the same way one needs 
the wisdom of God to know when to help and when merely to 
stand by in prayer and sympathy. 

The successive decisions required in taking the steps already 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN 91 

suggested prepare the way for a more complete functioning 
of the will-power. It is difficult to follow honestly up to this 
point without facing Jesus Christ and the love that made Him 
willing to pour out His soul unto death — the death of the cross — 
that we might live. It will be easy then to recognize His right 
to full authority in the life. There will be a growing desire to 
place Him on the throne of the heart. The crisis will be on 
when, in childlike faith by an act of the will, the heart confesses 
His right and bows to it. 

"Laid on Thine altar, O my Lord divine, 

Accept my gift this day, for Jesus' sake; 
I have no jewels to adorn Thy shrine, 

Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make, — 
Just here I bring within my trembling hand 

This will of mine — a thing that seemeth small, 
And only Thou, dear Lord, canst understand 

How, when I yield Thee this, I yield mine all! 
Hidden therein, Thy searching eye can see 

Struggles of passion, visions of delight, 
All that I love, or am, or fain would be, — 

Deep loves, fond hopes, and longings infinite. 
It hath been wet with tears and dimmed with sighs, 

Clenched in my grasp, till beauty it hath none. 
Now from Thy footstool, where it vanquished lies, 

The prayer ascendeth, 'May Thy will be done.' 
Take it, O Father, ere my courage fail; 

And merge it so in Thine own will that e'en 
If in some desperate hour my cries prevail, 

And Thou give me my gift, it would have been 
So changed, so purified, so fair have grown, 

So one with Thee, so filled with peace divine, 
I may not know or feel it as mine own; 

But, gaining back my will, may find it Thine." 

From that time on there come joyful discoveries. Jesus 
Christ becomes a personal Saviour in whose presence besetting 
sins shrivel up and disappear. There is also heard a new note 
of authority in the heart which proclaims this Christ as Master 
for a new life of worth-while service. He guides into "paths of 
righteousness for His name's sake" and releases inner latent 
energies for spiritual conquest. And as the days go on one 
begins to realize the presence of Christ as a satisfying Friend. 
His companionship raises the standard of friendships and brings 
a new sense of values into life. Thus belief and trust in God 



92 THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

come naturally. It is the logical result of an experience gained 
by meeting certain conditions. 

"You ask me why I thought this loving Christ would heed my prayer? 
I knew He died upon the cross for me — I nailed Him there ! 
I heard His dying cry — ' Father, forgive ! ' 
I saw Him drink death's cup that I might live: 
My head was bowed upon my breast in shame ! 
He called me and in penitence I came. 
He heard my prayer ! I cannot tell you how 
Nor when nor where — only I love Him now." 

BIBLE STUDY XI 
Winning the Non-Christian 

I. The explanation of the non-Christian life. 

See Romans 1 : 18-23. (See the Moffat translation.) The trend down- 
ward is natural and easy. N 

(1) The truth was suppressed deliberately — although it was all about 

them in nature (verses 18-20). 

(2) Although people knew God, they did not give Him glory or exalt 

Him (verse 21). 

(3) They were unthankful toward God. 

(4) They became vain and proud of their mental processes and dis- 

cussions. 

(5) Their hearts became darkened because of their pride of intellect. 

(6) Boasting of their own wisdom they ignored the wisdom of God and 

thus became fools. 

(7) They worshipped perishable images instead of the imperishable 

God. In reality people exchanged places with their Creator, 
worshipping what they had created, instead of the One who had 
created them. 
Any one can slip into the non-Christian experience by this natural se- 
quence. The point which determines the issue is described in Isaiah 
50 : 10, 11. It all depends on whether we walk in our own light or in the 
light of God as we see it in the face of Jesus Christ. What is our source 
of light? Is it our own ideas or the truth of God? 

II. The steps out of the non-Christian life. 

(1) Read Heb. 3 : 7-13, 19. "If ye shall hear his voice, harden not 
your hearts." Think of what we lose if we delay listening; e. g., see 
Deut. 1 : 2-3. It took the Israelites forty years to go eleven days' journey 
because of their hardness of heart. See Heb. 3 : 8, 9. 

(2) Receive the truth. See John 1 : 12, "receiving" and "believing" 
are used here interchangeably. Read Matt. 18 : 3 for the teaching about 
the child heart. "Become" a little child implies a process of growth even 
if one "be" not a child. 

(3) Recognize the sin of unbelief, as in John 1:11, the awful sin of break- 
ing the connection between ourselves and God— who "made us for him- 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN 93 

self" Have I a right to rob God of myself, whom He made for His own 
possession? 

(4) Heb. 4 : 1-2. We must recognize that we come short of His best 
because the word of hearing was not united by faith. God has the right 
to speak to the heart that He has made; therefore one should receive it in 
childlike faith and trust. 

(5) Read Heb. 4 : 6-11. We must deal with the spirit of disobedience. 
This centres around our will. "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh." 
Heb. 12 : 25. The promises of Jesus in John 7 : 17 and John 14 : 21 are 
then to be tested by any one who will prove their truth by obedience. 

(6) Read Matt. 11 : 28 and I John 1 : 8-10. Begin to open the mind 
to the invitation of Jesus Christ and take Him at His word. 

(7) Luke 11 : 13. Begin to exercise the privilege of a child and ask for 
the Holy Spirit. Let us humble ourselves before God and thank Him for 
His willingness to receive us. See Phil. 4 : 6, 7. In this way we create 
the right attitude of heart toward God and begin to form the nabit of de- 
pendence on Him for all our need and all our life. 

(8) See Romans 8 : 1-3 and Romans 8 : 16. We then come to know 
the freedom that comes when the spirit of life in Christ Jesus begins to work 
in us changing our former unworthy and selfish desires into holy and unself- 
ish yearnings. God does not force any one of us into a life with Him, but 
He waits for us to give Him a chance to enter in by His Spirit and transform 
us from within. 

"You ask me how I gave my heart to Christ? 
I do not know. 
There came a yearning for Him in my soul 

So long ago. 
I found earth's flowers would fade and die; 
I longed for something that could satisfy: 
And then — and then — somehow I seemed to dare 
To lift my broken heart to Him in prayer. 
I do not know; 
I cannot tell you how: 

I only know 
He is my Saviour now !" 



CHAPTER XII 

THE APPROACH TO THOSE WHO HAVE 
INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

Ever since Jesus Christ said of Himself "I am the truth" 
Christianity has not been afraid of any honest question nor 
dismayed by any discovery of new truth. The Christian faith 
is a natural faith based on the truth that through Jesus Christ 
it is possible for man to have a personal relationship with the 
God who made the heavens and the earth and in whom are all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Rejoicing in that re- 
lationship we were meant to grow up as children in our Father's 
house, gaining new knowledge of Him and His relation to the 
world, seeing in Him the One in whom all things hold together. 
Through history, experience, and knowledge we were meant to 
understand our wonderful Father, and to love Him not only 
with all our heart and strength but also with all our mind. 
This ideal would have been simple were it not that the dulness 
of people's minds has often worked sad havoc with the sim- 
plicity of their faith. Sometimes people have been baffled in 
their minds because the discovery of the natural laws and 
methods of God's working were so slowly made that faith seemed 
only a mystery with no rational basis of intellectual surety. 
Some people with a false sense of reverence for God have 
thought it wrong to question the why or how of God's workings 
and have exacted a blind unreasoning faith from others and so 
done violence to that mental integrity which God gave us. 
Often, too, in blindness or pride of heart men have thought 
that they could see all the truth and have exalted their inter- 
pretation of it as the standard for entrance into the kingdom of 
God; thus many have been caused to stumble, because they 
could not give their mental consent. There have been others 
also who expected of little children the mental acquiescence of 
adult life, forgetting the parable of the kingdom, in which our 
Lord spoke of the law of growth: "First the blade, then the 

94 



INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 95 

ear, then the full corn in the ear," and many of these chil- 
dren fell back in dismay and mental confusion. It often hap- 
pens that the emphasis of one truth to the exclusion of others 
has produced a distorted gospel which has made people ques- 
tion and turn away puzzled by such a picture of Christianity. 

These and other experiences through which the Christians 
of all ages have wandered in their search to know God ought to 
make us tender in our sympathy with those who as naturally 
ask "Why?" and "How?" regarding spiritual matters as our 
little children ask their many questions in getting acquainted 
with their little world. Especially in these days of the twen- 
tieth century are we full of new questions regarding God and 
His revelation through Jesus Christ. Science has revealed the 
marvellous workings of natural law bringing new assurance to 
our faith in God, and at the same time raising new questions. 
Historical research has dug out the very roots of our faith and 
made us reconstruct some of our theories, while it has shed new 
light on the sources of our confidence. The fire and the sword 
are turning upside down our ideas about Christian living and 
civilization. The ease with which all the secrets of knowledge 
are accessible and open to every boy and girl makes each one 
of them a walking question-mark if they have any mental life 
at all. When we add to all this the struggles of mental adoles- 
cence to which every college student is keenly alive it seems as 
though no service could be more important than helping our 
friends to-day to find their Lord towering above all the wisdom 
of the world and to see all of it related rationally to Him. 

As we look at the perplexity of people we find that the time 
when questions of faith are most nerve-racking is during those 
years that mark the mental transition from youth to maturity. 
Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five the strain is great- 
est. During this time we put a question-mark after nearly 
every statement and demand that beliefs should meet the test 
of reason and experience. To none does this period of mental 
adolescence bring more difficulties than to the sincere Chris- 
tian. In the realm of the religious life the suffering is keenest. 
Especially is this true with those whose Christianity has been a 
habit of life into which they have grown naturally because of 
home training and example, or have inherited along with furni- 
ture and family traditions. The authority of parents and the 
pastor of the home church have been all-compelling — some- 



96 INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

times too compelling. Often the religious teaching has been so 
dogmatic and positive that the mind of the child has reacted 
against it and refuses to be acquiescent. The same effect may 
be produced by certain kinds of religious reading: 

" Books that prove 
God's being so definitely, that man's doubt 
Grows self-defined the other side the line, 
Made atheist by suggestion; moral books, 
Exasperating to license." 

(Mrs, E. B. Browning.) 

Out of the protecting influences of home life that have shielded 
them from those persons and points of view that would counter- 
act home influences they are suddenly transferred to college or 
to business. There they meet some attractive personalities 
who seem to get on happily without habits of devotion. Every 
course in college naturally stirs up speculative thoughts; busi- 
ness standards do not square with religious teaching; the 
value of each habit of life is challenged. Father and mother 
are far away and even if they were near they might not be able 
to understand, because they may not have had a similar ex- 
perience. Our Christian friend feels the necessity of restating 
truth in terms of life and experience, and thus the old authority 
is questioned. In science, literature, and philosophy one is 
dealt with as a rational creature and the mind is encouraged to 
demand reasons for its convictions. Why should not religious 
beliefs stand the same tests? It is just at this point that a 
feeling of uncertainty and loneliness drops down like a fog 
which grows all the blacker as the days go by. It is difficult 
to find sympathy or constructive help in thinking through these 
problems. 

It is not always easy to gain the confidence of these per- 
plexed ones. Sometimes they do not like to own up to them- 
selves that their foundations are shaking. They are indeed 
fortunate if some mature Christian who has been through this 
experience comes into their horizon with hope, cheer, and prac- 
tical help. If any one of us does come into sympathetic rela- 
tions with those who are puzzled in their minds, it will be merely 
because we have been utterly natural with them and taken 
their experiences for granted as normal and inevitable. Above 
all things, we ought never to question their right to ask ques- 



INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 97 

tions — that is God-given — and who are we that we should take 
it away? 

In helping people to a reasonable faith we should use chiefly 
the natural counsels of common sense that we can all accept, 
trusting that these will be the steadying power that in time will 
bring mental poise and satisfaction. It is quiet confidence and 
reassurance that we all need at such times and a sane appreci- 
ation of the laws of our mental growth. In mental stress it is 
well to recall the following points: 

(1) Many questions relating to religious faith need time for 
their answer. The mind is likely to be impatient and demand 
immediate satisfaction in the manner of a small child who can 
unconsciously ask questions far beyond its ability to under- 
stand. If a person can be persuaded to face doubts honestly, 
noting them down and then quietly putting them aside, time 
will bring unexpected evidence. It is not a mark of intellectual 
cowardice to "call time" on questions of faith. A distinguished 
scholar once showed a friend a little note-book which he carried 
with him continually. In it he noted some queries that had 
occurred to him as he read or listened to others. He put them 
down so that at some convenient time he might read and find 
answers to them. He said it had often been his experience 
that a month or so later when he would take out his book 
and look at his questions many of them could be crossed off 
at once because they had been so fully answered by some 
experience or chance reading that he had done. In fact, it 
seemed as though everything in life combined to give him light 
if only he stated his question clearly and gave it time. It takes 
strength of mind to be quiet in mind and resist the temptation 
to have mental Saint Vitus's dance through that impatience of 
spirit which says: "I want what I want when I want it." It is 
a sign of youth in oursdves that we must recognize and be pa- 
tient with, while at the same time we discipline ourselves in 
self-control. 

(2) It is well often to recall the words of Saint Paul : " Now I 
know in part 9 ' However deeply one may go in the search for 
knowledge, there are questions to puzzle the mind and bafHe 
the thinking. These are beyond present experience and lure 
us on to greater discoveries in future. There are, however, some 
things that we know in part, and they are sufficient to direct 
the course to-day and form a foundation for the thinking of 



98 INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

to-morrow. There is no doubt, for example, that it is the 
revealed will of God that we should be honest, and pure, and 
loving. Let us take these simple, well-known revelations of 
God — they are not so simple as they seem — and give them full 
sway in every detail of daily life. It will be strange indeed if 
we do not feel rebuked for ever supposing that we could be 
intrusted with more light when we discern so dimly these 
fundamental facts of God's character. The classic illustration 
of the spiritual experience of Horace Bushnell is a case in 
point. It is vividly described as follows: 

"Is there, then, no truth that I do believe? Yes, there is 
this one, now that I think of it: there is a distinction of right 
and wrong that I never doubted, and I see not how I can; 
I am even quite sure of it." Then forthwith starts up the 
question: "Have I, then, ever taken the principle of right 
for my law? I have done right things as men speak; have 
I ever thrown my life out on the principle to become all it 
requires of me ? No, I have not, consciously I have not. Ah ! 
then, here is something for me to do ! No matter what be- 
comes of my questions — nothing ought to become of them 
if I cannot take a first principle, so inevitably true, and live in it." 
The very suggestion seems to be a kind of revelation; it is even 
a relief to feel the conviction it brings. "Here, then," he says, 
"will I begin. If there is a God, as I rather hope there is, 
and very dimly believe, he is a right God. If I have lost him 
in wrong, perhaps I shall find Him in right. Will He not 
meet me, or perchance, even be discovered to me ? " Now the 
decisive moment is come. He drops on his knees, and there 
he prays to the dim God, dimly felt, confessing the dimness for 
honesty's sake, and asking for help that he may begin a right 
life. He bows himself on it as he prays, choosing it to be hence- 
forth his unalterable, eternal endeavor." 

"It is an awfully dark prayer, in the look of it; but the 
truest and best he can make, . . . and the prayer and the 
vow are so profoundly meant that his soul is borne up into 
God's help. . . . He rises, and it is as if he had gotten wings. 
. . . After this all troublesome doubt of God's reality is gone; 
for he has found Him! A being so profoundly felt must in- 
evitably be." 

(3) We need to guard the action of the mind that the emphasis be 
placed on positive rather than negative thinking. Cling to what is 



INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 99 

known and constructive and do not let the burden of what is 
yet to be learned make us incapable of action now. Let us use 
all we do know now. We do not refuse to push an electric- 
light button merely because we do not understand the laws of 
electricity; we use the knowledge we have and in the very 
use of it learn more of the mysterious beyond. Almost every- 
thing in life begins with a fact and ends in a mystery. It is the 
glory of our humanity that we are in such a world and can grow 
in knowledge and discover for ourselves each day a larger 
world which does not contradict the smaller world of yesterday 
but adds to its horizon. It is fortunate for us that there are 
so many books available for help in finding foundations for faith. 
Courage will come from seeing how thoughtful men have long 
been aware of the mental difficulties concerning faith and how 
they are meeting them constructively. 

(4) Do not neglect the usual forms of Christian service and the 
study of the gospels, even though there may be much mental uncer- 
tainty. Through this practical laboratory work light will come. 
One may not be able to give light to another who is mentally 
befogged, but inspiring them to do practical service for those 
in physical, social, or moral need will be a wholesome tonic for 
their faith. A distinguished theological professor who went 
through years of mental questioning says that his faith in God's 
power was constantly reaffirmed by his experience three nights 
a week in a rescue mission where he had to help sin-stained men 
into a new life. The effort to win them drove him back to the 
promises of Christ. 

One often finds students who suspend all the activities of 
the Christian life and their habits of worship through a mis- 
taken sense of honesty. They accuse themselves of hypocrisy 
and say: "How can I worship at church and engage in prayer 
when I'm not sure what I believe? At least I will be honest 
and not pretend to be something that I am not." And with 
a sense of heroic virtue they withdraw from all the atmosphere 
that would stimulate and inspire them in their search for sin- 
cerity and cut themselves off from some of the sources of spiritual 
help. They would not think of applying such logic to college 
experiences in science or mathematics. Suppose they failed 
to grasp some scientific principle. Would it be an evidence of 
honesty to say: "I do not understand that principle. I will 
not work any longer in the laboratory or study the text-book, 



100 INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

for it would be hypocritical" ? No, any sincere student would 
consider it necessary to double the time spent in study and to 
seek to know the mysterious scientific principle by ever more 
thorough and painstaking laboratory work. By the same 
method spiritual fog is dispelled. 

(5) It is reasonable to expect that light on the Christian life will 
come most quickly through a closer study of the sources contained in 
the New Testament. No opinion of men about Jesus Christ can 
compare in value with going directly to his teachings and meeting 
the challenge of his words and personality. It is a test of our 
sincerity — Doctor Coe emphasizes this in writing on this subject. 
"The intellectual tactics most likely to be helpful in such 
cases consist less in the direct refutation of the doubt than in 
the wider opening out of the problem through which the 
doubt arises. A larger horizon is often sufficient. A doubt as 
to the inspiration of the Scriptures can best be met by exhibiting 
the growth of the self-revelation of God of which the Scriptures 
are a record. . . . Similarly, doubts as to the person of Christ 
may well be met by intensive study of His life as a whole and 
a broad study of the place that He occupies in the general 
religious history of humanity." 

(6) In searching for light on intellectual questions one needs to 
examine the inner motives for this search and ash often: " Why do 
I want to know these things? Do I want light because of my 
interest in the workings of the brain and the mental stimulus of 
added knowledge, or am I searching for light in order to find 
out the will of God and do it?" Knowledge of spiritual truth 
involves the relationship between two living spirits, God the 
infinite Spirit, and the human, finite spirit. In order to know 
the truth there must be an honest will to obey and follow the 
light as it is revealed by the Father of light, with whom every 
human life must inevitably reckon. The Christian must at least 
have the mental attitude of the pagan in whose lips Richard 
Watson Gilder puts the words: 

"If Jesus Christ is a man, — 
And only a man, — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him 
And to him will I cleave alway. 

"If Jesus Christ is a God, — 
And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea, the air." (R. W. Gilder.) 



INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 101 

(7) A right attitude of spirit is as essential as a right attitude of 
will. The humble receptive heart of a little child is sure to 
grow in knowledge. Jesus made this a condition of entering the 
kingdom of heaven, and adds that " Whoso shall humble him- 
self as this little child the same is greatest in the kingdom 
of heaven." The besetting sin of the mind is likely to be in- 
tellectual pride and presumption. It often insists on paring 
down a subject to the dimensions of its own limited capacity. 
Some one has defined scepticism as the friction that results 
when a small mind tries to take in all at once a very big idea. 
Our mental confusion ought to be a reflection on our own finite- 
ness rather than an occasion for challenging the teaching of 
Christ. 

There is need to recall often the character of God and rest in 
the faith that He is working with a love and wisdom that 
takes into account all seeming contradictions between the world 
as it is and as it ought to be. And this is reinforced by the 
promise of Jesus that the Spirit of God " shall guide you into all 
the truth" and "take of mine and shall declare it unto you" 
(John 16 : 13, 14). 

(8) The yearning for light and the persistent prayer for help will 
always find an answer. This may come in a number of ways. 
There will be a growing spirit of discernment and an awareness 
of what is true so that the mind will be able to sift evidence and 
judge facts more fairly. Then, too, day by day, experience will 
be added which will confirm many things that seemed dog- 
matic and unreal before. " The path of the righteous is as the 
dawning light that shineth more and more unto perfect day" 
(Prov. 4 : 18). Daily living with others will disclose sources 
of strength or weakness that will vitalize some truth that seemed 
hitherto unimportant. And light will also come through added 
knowledge. This help will come through the books written by 
honest thinkers who dare to face issues and think their way out 
to clear conclusions. All this available knowledge is part of 
God's reply to the sincere thinker. There are some things that 
have been proven and the student may well build upon the 
knowledge of others. 

(9) An open-minded student cannot get very far afield if the 
authority of Christ is recognized in all matters pertaining to God. 
Every one bows to some authority, though he may not be will- 
ing to own to it, and instinctively follows some one who seems 



102 INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

to be an echo of his thinking. Many students are dazzled by 
some personality who seems to move along brilliantly unham- 
pered by tradition. They trail along in the wake of his me- 
teoric dust, not realizing that they are not really independent 
thinkers. Sooner or later they wake up to the limitations of 
the one they follow. Now, if we are bound to follow some 
personality why not accept the authority of Jesus Christ as a 
working hypothesis? Even though at first the mind may not 
understand the mystery of his personality and may challenge 
His claims, yet we are driven back constantly to His life and 
teaching as the final revelation of God. Whatever else man 
may see in Jesus Christ, the world recognizes at least that He 
is the great specialist in the knowledge of God and in the realm 
of character. And because He is the great specialist we do well 
to bow to His authority. One does not compromise his in- 
tellectual life by taking the teachings of Christ as a working 
hypothesis to be tested in the laboratory of life. All prog- 
ress in science is made by this method. We obey the direc- 
tions of the specialist and work them out by experiment. Then 
the mind is convinced and the knowledge is truly ours. We use 
wireless telegraphy even before we understand it; we take 
most of our daily life on faith. Can we do any less with the 
teachings of Jesus Christ? To recognize and yield to His right 
to be followed implicitly is to open the door into a large free 
country where peace, order, and satisfaction abide. We make 
the final test of truth by proving its power in life, and then a 
compelling conviction will come, that Jesus Christ is as He 
claimed, "the way, the truth, and the life." 



BIBLE STUDY XII 

Knowing and Believing 

I. The open door to spiritual verity. 

Read John 3 : 1-21. Nicodemus, a type of the earnest intellectual man 
who is deeply interested in all religious questions. His mental curiosity 
was more concerned with the method and process by which Jesus worked 
miracles than with the fact of the sign as bringing God near. The key 
to his attitude is revealed by the words "How can" in verses 4 and 9. He 
takes for granted that the measure of his mind must be the measure of 
his religion. In answering him Jesus opens the door into the great regions 
beyond the facts of human experience and states the laws by which alone 
we can understand the things of God. Nicodemus was neglecting to use 



INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 103 

the eye of his heart because he was so sure that the eyes of his mind were 
his surest guides. In common with many modern students he needed to 
realize the truth that Mrs. Browning discerned: 

"All this anguish in the thick 
Of men's opinions . . . press and counterpress, 
Now up, now down, now underfoot, and now 
Emergent ... all the best of it, perhaps, 
But throws you back upon a noble trust 
And use of your own instinct, — merely proves 
Pure reason stronger than bare inference 
At strongest. Try it, — fix against heaven's wall 
Your scaling ladders of high logic — mount 
Step by step ! — Sight goes faster; that still ray 
Which strikes out from you, how, you cannot tell, 
And why, you know not — (did you eliminate, 
That such as you, indeed, should analyze?) 
Goes straight and fast as light, and high as God." 

II. The miracle of the illumined heart. 

(1) Read again verses 3, 5, and 6. Compare them with John 23, 24. 
On what does every true personal relationship depend ? Study I Cor. 1 : 20, 
21 and 2:11, 14, and write down in your own words the way Paul explains 
the teaching of Jesus. How do we enter into the experience of being 
"born again"? See Luke 11 : 13. What is the connection between 
being "born of the spirit" and intellectual growth? See John 16 : 12-14. 

(2) Read John 1:4. Is there such a thing as truth in the realm of 
spirit apart from life and personality? in the case of love, purity, honesty, 
etc. ? Life becomes a laboratory for light and intellectual perception. Read 
again John 3 : 16, 19, 20, 21. What is the cause of moral blindness in verse 
20 ? What is the challenge that Jesus makes to every one who finds it diffi- 
cult to believe in Him? See verses 18, 19. What has to be settled before 
one can expect to see the truth ? See Matt. 5 : 8 and John 12 : 46. Jesus 
said: "I am the truth," "I am the fight of the world." If we say we want 
to know truth and yet do not come to Him who is truth what is the infer- 
ence? 

(3) Light comes only to the receptive, open mind and to the heart of a 
little child. See Matt. 18 : 3. Note the force of the word "become" 
which implies a process. A person may not be a little child and yet be- 
come one. See I Cor. 13 : 12 for two expressions of Paul's childlike mind 
which knows it does not see fully and makes many mistakes in judgment. 
What is the comfort of the child relationship with our Lord? See John 
10 : 26-29. 

"I lost breath in my soul sometimes, 
And cried, 'God save me if there's any God/ 
But, even so, God saved me; and being dashed 
From error on to error, every turn 
Still brought me nearer to the central truth." 

(Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh.) 

(4) The life in Christ is imparted by exposing the heart to the infection 
of His teachings. See John 5 : 39, 40, John 7 : 37, and John 8 : 12, also 



104 INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

John 6 : 63. All spiritual truth taught by others is only the diluted teach- 
ing of Jesus Christ. Why are we so reluctant to get into close quarters 
with His teaching? 

(5) Obedience to the word of Christ is the condition for knowing the 
truth. See John 7 : 17. "He that willeth to do . . . shall know." What 
does Jesus promise we shall know? What other rewards are promised to 
those who obey? See John 14 : 21. 

(6) The gift of the Spirit — the indwelling God — is the great gift that 
alone helps us to know the truth. Luke 11 : 13 and I Cor. 2 : 12. Can 
we be honest and sincere and meet these conditions? We can never say 
again truthfully that we are wanting to know the truth if we do not face 
this challenge of Jesus Christ. We do not need more of God, but God 
needs more of us — needs to possess more of our attention and thoughts — 
"bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (II 
Cor. 10 : 5). 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE APPROACH TO THOSE WHO ARE FIGHTING 
BESETTING SINS 

"Character/' Booker T. Washington once said, "is the sum 
of all we struggle against." It is the pure metal that abides 
the fire and the pressure and the long process of testing. There 
is something in us that will not let us rest in the fight because 
God has put into us spirits that tend to be like Him. We can- 
not be satisfied unless we are victors. When our spirits have 
once looked into the face of God we become aware of two facts — 
we see what we must be if we are to be fit to live with Him, and 
we see ourselves as we are, stained by our choice of sin, weaker 
than wee babes, discouraged by the seeming hopelessness 
of ever freeing our spirits from the chains of the flesh. There 
are many people who have just seen enough of God to be con- 
scious of their losing fight, and yet have not seen enough to 
know that the heart of the gospel lies in bringing power to us 
all to win out through our Lord Jesus Christ. The fact of life 
to which each of us bears witness is that we are bound for a 
destiny — which is conditioned by character; that character 
we must have, and it is to be won only by a struggle against 
great odds, but possible through a strength not our own imparted 
by God through Jesus Christ. What then is more worth while 
than to help people to find this strength of God ? We can really 
help others in no permanent way if we cannot help them here. 
Now, in order to help others, we ourselves need to under- 
stand the situation and face the fact that struggle was meant 
to give us wings and not weights. Otherwise we may be 
like many who resent having to fight and vnth a cynical spirit 
look upon themselves as victims of the scheme of things, so 
losing their conception of a loving heavenly Father. The 
popularity of writings like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam and 
that of kindred pagans bears witness to a sympathy with his 
cynicism which many a modern student of life shares. 

105 



106 BESETTING SINS 

And yet Omar Khayara recognized the first fundamental 
fact in the situation when he said: 

"I sent my soul out in the Invisible 
Some letter of the After Life to spell: 
And by and by my soul returned and answered: 

'I, myself, am heaven and hell. , " 

In other words each of us is here with a capacity for being either 
heaven or hell; we have an equal chance to be one thing or the 
other. The capacity is within us; it is not alone due to the 
scheme of things. 

We are also responsible moral agents. Sin is not ignorance 
gone astray; we have the power to choose according to our 
desire. The choices of many of us may be few, but there is 
always some one choice between good and evil to be made, and 
we are responsible only for the scope of choices that each of us 
has. We see these choices worked out so often in the same 
family. Two children with the same parents, the same en- 
vironment, the same chances for choice will develop utterly 
different characters; one may have always desired to make 
right choices and the other may have desired to make wrong 
choices. The capacity for desire was the same, the choice 
different — the character in the end just what each had made it. 

The third fact is that strength grows by exercise with ob- 
stacles; it is the fight that gives interest to life. The foot- 
ball team only grows strong by facing an opposing team: the 
game is interesting only if it is a close one. The doctor longs 
for a difficult case in order that his skill may be tested. A girl 
plays a brilliant sonata only through the exercise of many hours 
of practising. We train our wills to do the will of God only by 
repeated choices of the right in the face of alluring by-paths. 

The fourth fact that we need to face is that we are so made 
that often our will gets more strength on the rebound than 
by direct pressure. " I never was really truthful," said a friend, 
" until I had to work by the side of a woman who was habitu- 
ally insincere and circuitous. It filled me with such loathing 
that I determined to be sincere always." The will often 
gains self-control by having to face unrestrained impatience 
in others. In fact, we seem to learn from concrete object- 
lessons in what is wrong to turn from it to God. The presence 
of darkness makes us appreciate the light. 



BESETTING SINS 107 

It is also this consciousness of imperfection that may open up 
the beauties of a filial relation with God. Our mothers are dear 
to us because of the patience with which they guided us through 
our days of weakness and uncontrol until we caught their 
spirit and ideals and reverenced their love which stood the test 
of all our failures and faults. So in a more wonderful way we 
grow to know the love of God through our crying out in the 
dark and hearing His voice, through our need of forgiveness 
and counsel, through the pull of the ideal as we see it in Him, 
through the gift of his strength, and through the yielding up of 
our desires to His will in an obedience that brings rest. 

Finally, it helps us to face the struggle when we realize that 
all the strong and lasting things in life cost pain and a long 
fight. We must be worth an infinite price, each of us, because 
it takes so long to weld our characters. "How soon can you 
educate my boy?" asked a man of a school principal; "I 
don't want him to go through a lot of unnecessary grind." 
"That depends on what you want to make of him," came the 
reply. " God can make a squash in three months, but it takes 
one hundred years to make an oak." It is our destiny that makes 
the long fight against wind and storm and cold both necessary 
and worth while, and the sooner we gird us up for the fray 
to fight to a finish the sooner the victory will come. " This is 
how I run," says Paul, "not being in any doubt as to my goal." 

The fight with besetting sins, those that keep us from obey- 
ing our Lord, generally centres around some root or central sin, 
the especial weak spot in each of us. It may be the enthralling 
slavery of some gross sin of the flesh, or selfishness may be the 
pivotal centre of our hearts, or we may be mesmerized by the 
lure of the world. From these three roots come the many 
branches of wrong choices that overgrow our hearts, shut out 
the light, and make us spiritual anaemics. It does no good to 
lop off the branches so long as we fail to deal with the tap- 
root. Much of the discouragement about ourselves, which we 
often try to shake off by plausible excuses, comes because we fail 
to deal with the root of all our besetting sins. 

In facing the fight we need to go about it with a skill born 
of the experience that those who have won out have gained. 
There is help for all of us who are willing to be taught. Our 
experience is not unique but the common lot of the race and 
there are rules of the game that we need to heed. 



108 BESETTING SINS 

(1) We need to define our own particular sin in its root-form 
and own up to it to ourselves and to God. It is not hard to 
find out. Let us look at the things that are the line of least re- 
sistance in us. The joy in a vulgar joke, the itching for gossip 
and scandal, the desire to seem sophisticated and accustomed 
to things that soil ideals and smirch our purity, the amused 
smile over the innocent spirit, the delight in impure books and 
mental pictures may reveal to us a spirit that loves impurity 
and a heart that is sensual at the core. We shrink from owning 
up to anything so hideous, but we shall not get far until we 
shock ourselves by seeing our sin just as it is. 

It may be another trail, however, that leads to the home 
of our poverty-stricken spirit. Perhaps our weak point may 
be discovered to us by a habit of self-pity and the imagining 
of unreal situations in which we are always the star actors; 
by reluctance to give others their due of praise or opportunity, 
by content with our own righteousness, by jealousy of our 
friends and their happiness or success, by chafing over neglect 
and lack of appreciation; by a misuse of our personal power 
over others; by a conviction that people are wilfully refusing 
to see how wonderful we are and by our resentment of criticism. 
Under all these "natural" weaknesses lies the ugly fact that 
we are self-centred and selfish. It isn't easy to accept this 
inflated ego as an exact picture of ourselves, but we must look 
at it until we loathe it, or there is no deliverance for us. 

But perhaps our portrait has other features. It may be 
outlined by the fear of what " they " may say or think, the love 
of excitement, the panting to keep up with the chase, the living 
beyond one's strength and means, the dread of being alone, 
the fear of being unlike others, the desire for self-indulgence 
and luxury, and the subtle influence of false standards. We 
can excuse ourselves for being drawn into these weaknesses, 
but we are silent when we see that in reality we are living a 
lie and losing our souls because we love the world more than we 
love our life and our God. Soon people will see our shrivelled 
spirits and laugh at our folly. There is no peace for us until 
we see ourselves as we really are at heart — insincerity posing 
as sincerity. 

(2) Having defined and owned to our sin, we need to recall that 
it is not God's will that we should be slaves of sin. There is no 
need that I should be a captive one moment longer than I really 



BESETTING SINS 109 

want to be. I can face my own weakness and say with truth, 
"It is impossible for me to break this slavery in my own 
strength," but in the same breath I can also say, "The things 
that are impossible with men are possible with God"; "If 
any man thirst let him come unto me and drink, and from 
within him shall flow rivers of living water"; "By grace are ye 
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves ; it is the gift 
of God." The whole message of the gospel of Jesus Christ 
is meaningless if it does not work in my case. It must if I 
meet the needful tests. If I cannot believe in God, I can- 
not believe in anything. But I must believe in His power; 
because it has worked in other lives, therefore it can work in 
mine. 

(3) Let us deal with our sin at its source and fight our battle 
in the realm of the imagination. Every spiritual battle is lost 
or won in the life of our thoughts. It is what the word means 
which reads: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it 
are all the issues of life." The temptation usually comes in 
when we relax our minds and let the door stand open; when 
we "let ourselves go" a prey to any wandering thoughts. It 
is the ungirded mind that is open to swift attack. The tempta- 
tion also comes upon the heels of self-pity; when we begin to 
be sorry for ourselves and let self instead of our Lord get the 
reins into its hands. The minute we are in control of self we 
are in the control of weakness. There is no wolf in sheep's 
clothing quite so demoralizing to our strength as self-pity in 
the realm of our imagination. Much of our besetting sin 
would never get in to us if we were prepared by having in our 
minds a number of subjects for thought that are truthful and 
lawful, interesting and creative. It is here that we need also 
to incarnate the living Christ so that we shall never be alone in 
our minds but find every thought hallowed by His presence, 
open to His scrutiny. In God's presence our heart and thought 
must face the desires of the flesh, our self-love and our insincere 
bondage to the world; we can then get from Him a clean heart 
and holy desires, giving up fully our very selves to be dealt 
with by Him. 

The next step for victory forms a working programme for 
the daily life of any one who sincerely wants God to rule in 
his life. It is merely the practical application of modern 
psychology to the situation by which any one may take advan- 



110 BESETTING SINS 

tage of natural reinforcements that are available in the daily 
fight with sin. It is well to recall a few of these helps. 

(1) Crowd out the tempting thought by diverting the attention 
to some other interesting subject. We cannot subdue our emotions 
but we can will to think hard of something else until the wrong 
emotions die a natural death. It follows also that the more 
interests we have that absorb and fascinate, the easier it is to 
turn from the one that brings a temptation to others that hold 
us. It is a good thing to develop as many points of contact 
with life as possible. Often a temptation loses its power to 
cast a spell over us because of a wider horizon and a larger life 
which bring a new scale of values. It is well to have at hand 
some clever books that hold the attention or some enjoyable 
task that needs our concentrated effort or some friends to whom 
we can turn whenever we find ourselves swept along by sud- 
den temptations. When we know our danger-points it is the 
part of common sense to guard against them in advance by 
some such definite preparation. 

(2) Remember that the mind is held by the positive thought on 
which it is concentrated. Many of us have had the baffling ex- 
perience of praying intensely to be delivered from the grip of 
a certain sin and then rising from our knees to go forth and 
commit that sin before an hour has passed. It seems as if 
prayer did not help. The reason for our failure is hid in the 
fact that it was the wrong kind of prayer that failed to meet 
conditions and brought no help. A friend said that years ago, 
when she was trying to ride a bicycle, she never failed to run 
into a telegraph-pole if she looked at it; that she found that her 
eye instinctively guided her hand. The law is the same in 
prayer. When we focus our thought in prayer intensely on 
our sin we are consciously holding our attention on that sin, 
and the mind thus held by the positive thought is controlled 
by it in its acts. The reason why prayer is such a resource for 
a tempted spirit is that in the presence of God we have the 
most powerful stimulus to forget our sin and to remember and 
adore Him in all His power and beauty and holiness. Sin 
cannot abide in His sight, and if we come to Him recalling our 
relation to Him as little children and letting Him absorb our 
attention and thrill our hearts with the sense of His friendship, 
we rise up so bathed in the thought of Him that an evil thought 
has no welcome in our hearts. Thus deliverance comes. It 



BESETTING SINS 111 

is a help to commit to memory certain of the psalms of praise 
and filial trust like the 23d and 121st and the 90th; also por- 
tions of the gospels, like the 10th chapter of John, for the ex- 
press purpose of using them in prayer to recall God to our minds. 
In the same way we can change a wrong spirit that is in us. 
For example, we cannot pray for some one who has injured us 
until our unforgiving spirit is changed by the thought of our 
Lord. We need to remember His wonderful love when He 
prayed, "Father, forgive them/' and the patience that He has 
with us in all our stumblings, although we fail Him so pitifully. 
Then, when the thought of the one who has sinned against 
us is lost in the thought of our relation to Him, we find that we 
are able to pray honestly for our stumbling friends and the 
victory of a forgiving spirit comes. 

(3) We turn most easily to thoughts that have become habitual. 
The secret of lasting moral victory depends, humanly speaking, 
upon the reinforcement ofholy desires, memories, and habits 
of thought that have been stored up within us during the years. 
The practice of daily Bible reading and meditation is one of 
the means of opening our minds to the influence of Christ and 
giving Him a chance to control our thinking. If we keep our- 
selves steadily in the atmosphere of such pure and true fellow- 
ship we will find that memories of these experiences will come 
back to help and steady us in time of need. It is the work of 
God's Spirit, Jesus says, to "bring to your remembrance all 
that I said unto you. 39 Therefore the habit of thinking daily 
about the teaching of Christ takes on new value in view of the 
help it will bring to us later in the fire of temptation. The 
experience of countless Christians bears witness to the truth 
of this promise. It helps us also to know that Jesus met 
His temptations through His memory of the Scripture, thus 
confirming the word of the Psalmist: "Thy word have I hid in 
my heart that I might not sin against Thee" (Psalm 119 : 11). 

(4) Begin to help some one else to overcome temptation. There 
is nothing that helps more in our own struggle for character 
than to feel responsible for putting strength into another who 
trusts us. If we are sincere, it will lead us to moral victory. 
In fact, our sincerity is a big stimulus to our wills. We cannot 
give any one else what we have not ourselves, and if we urge 
others to win we too must win to keep our moral integrity. 
The sense of companionship in a moral struggle also brings 



112 BESETTING SINS 

help. Our friends take courage when they know that we, too, 
are making the same fight. It does not seem so hopeless and 
impossible to them when we tell them they can win a victory 
through Jesus Christ if they see that we understand the strength 
of the enemy and have found help in reply to prayer. It is 
one of the glorious privileges of our imperfect, stumbling life 
to find help for ourselves and for others too even before we have 
attained. As Forbes Robinson writes: "To help a brother 
up the mountain while you yourself are only just able to keep 
your foothold, to struggle through the mist together — that 
surely is better than to stand at the summit and beckon" 
(Forbes Robinson's Letters to His Friends, p. 118). 

(5) We need also to build up a margin of physical health as an 
aid to self-control. We have already seen, in Chapter VII, 
the relation of surplus nervous energy to the power of self- 
control. When we are facing the question of moral victory 
everything relating to our daily living becomes important as 
an aid or hindrance to our spiritual vigor. We cannot be hon- 
est before God and ignore the means of storing up nervous 
energy. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink," counsels Paul, 
" or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Food and 
exercise, sleep and interests that are varied and wholesome 
become sacred responsibilities. Especially too must we guard 
against the weakness of overfatigue lest an unfair advantage 
be taken by the desires of our flesh. It is during times of 
fatigue that the fight is hardest. 

(6) The friendship of Christ and the trust He puts in us will be 
a spur to victory. The trust of others calls forth all our sense of 
honor and loyalty. We do not want to fail our friends who 
expect us to be strong. In the same way, the life of friendship 
with our Lord holds us to our best if only we will keep ourselves 
under the spell of it. "He that abideth in me and I in him, 
the same bringeth forth much fruit," Jesus says to his disciples, 
and the inference is that we cannot help bringing forth fruit 
if we meet the test of the "abiding" life. If we do abide, then 
temptation is an opportunity to prove to our Lord that we are 
trustworthy; that we do not fail Him in the crisis. Finally, 
we learn that no temptation is so strong that it may not be 
overcome. The promise is indeed true that a way of escape 
is open to us if we will take it. Even in our severest tempta- 
tions there is a time when we debate with ourselves whether 



BESETTING SINS 113 

or not we will yield, and then if we do yield it is because we 
have deliberately decided to do so in the face of our con- 
science or in spite of the remembrance of God. We could 
have chosen to listen to Him if we had wanted to listen. The 
fact that we are so ashamed to go to God at once to begin again 
forgiven and cleansed is in itself a witness to the truth that we 
could have overcome. Even if this has been our experience let 
us never fall deeper into sin by staying away from Him in our 
shame. Let us begin anew in His strength, humbled yet de- 
termined to win at all costs. It all goes back to the will, to 
the honesty with which we can yield our wills to God with a 
pledge of obedience that grows easier as we see how He works 
in quiet patience to make us "all glorious within/' 



BIBLE STUDY XIII 

Fighting Sin 

I. The conflict within. 

Read Romans 7 : 19-8 : 1, 2. "The good which I would I do not: but 
the evil which I would not, that I practise." This is the cry of every 
honest spirit. The battle is hopeless without the transcendent power of 
the Holy Spirit bringing us into freedom to do the right because the prin- 
ciple of obedience to the will of Jesus Christ is permanently settled. In 
the conflict of inner desires, one must be willing that the Holy Spirit shall 
win out even though it means a fight. Have I definitely decided the issues 
between Christ and self in my life? Can I honestly say that the Spirit of 
God is gaining fuller control day by day? 

"This should have been a noble creature: he 
Hath all the energy which would have made 
A goodly frame of glorious elements, # 
Had they been wisely mingled: as it is, 
It is an awful chaos — light and darkness, 
And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts, 
Mixed, and contending without end or order — 
All dormant or destructive: he will perish 
And yet he must not." 

{Byron.) 

II. What sin means. 

See I John 3 : 4-5 — "lawlessness." Everything in the world is obedient 
to law and controlled by God. Man alone has the power and desire to 
become lawless and thus break the harmony of the universe. 

See I John 1 : 5-10. We cannot live in fellowship with God if we walk 
in darkness; so sin breaks our relationship with the One on whom we must 
depend for everything we are and have. Read also Psalm 66 : 18 and 
Isaiah 59 : 1-2. 



114 BESETTING SINS 

Read Romans 6 : 23. The end of sin is death — the wasting of all our 
powers. Can we afford to face such possibilities? Why is it that we or 
others go on without settling the question? 

III. Some motives that help us in our fight. 

Romans 8 : 15 and I John 3 : 1-3. The consciousness that we are 
God's children and we must be worthy of Him. 

Eph. 4 : 30. The Spirit of God yearns over us with such patience and 
watchfulness and is so faithful in speaking to our conscience that this 
remembrance ought to keep us from grieving Him. 

Heb. 12 : 1. The witnesses to the power of God all about us and the 
friends who trust us ought to call out every bit of determination in us to 
win out for their sakes. 

Acts 4 : 12. If we do not win the victory through Jesus Christ, all is 
lost. There is no other hope for us. All is at stake. 

Questions 
Which motive makes the strongest appeal and why? How can we de- 
velop an increasing sensitiveness to the approach of temptation? 

IV. How God reinforces us in temptation. 

John 14 : 26. Some holy memory is brought to our mind. If God uses 
our memory to help us, what is our responsibility in storing up material 
that he can use? 

Ezek. 36 : 25-27, 31. The miracle of the clean heart and new desires 
makes the impossible possible. In what two ways are the old desires 
overcome? See verses 27 and 31. What are the conditions that we must 
meet in order to have the gift of the new heart? 

I Cor. 10 : 13. God provides the way of escape. No temptation is 
so strong that it cannot be conquered in God's strength. It is the ex- 
perience of us all that in every temptation there is a calm moment when 
we decide whether or not we will yield. We decide the issue in our minds 
first before it gets into our action. We can escape if we will to do so. 
God does remind us in the still small voice; the responsibility is ours if 
we do not listen. What way of victory does Paul show in Romans 8 : 1- 
17? Describe his conception of our relation to Christ by which we may 
be made free from the law of sin and death. 

V. The safeguard against temptation. 

James 1 : 12-18 and Phil. 4 : 8, 9. Temptation comes when we are led 
away by our own desires. Through the appeal of whatever is beautiful, 
true, and honest, we can fill our minds with thoughts of these things, and 
throw all our energy into working for them until our minds are too fully 
occupied to give room to selfish desire. If we enter on some service for 
others that will commit us to the higher interests of life we will find our- 
selves held true even by the dependence and trust of others in us, and we 
will not dare fail them. Let us do everything in our power to let self- 
sacrificing love grow in our hearts that it may hold us in our time of need. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE APPROACH TO THOSE WHO FACE PROBLEMS 

OF CONDUCT 

The decision to give one's life to God through obedience to 
Jesus Christ as Saviour and Master and Friend is a definite 
act of the will that may take place in a moment of time; but 
the working out of the Christlike character in conduct is a proc- 
ess of a lifetime. The inner states and desires of the heart 
control not only the conscious thoughts of our minds but 
also the conduct of life in the outer world. That which is in 
the heart inevitably reveals itself in word, in deed, and in 
physical effects such as the very expression of our faces and 
tones of our voices. Character is formed by the repeated 
actions of our will, which carries out the inner desires of the 
heart. People judge of our character by the habitual desires 
of our hearts as they express themselves in conduct. When 
they know these uniform desires they know what to expect 
in our conduct. Sometimes a desire unlike our habitual desires 
gains temporary mastery and expresses itself in conduct. Such 
conduct is a shock to our friends for two reasons : first, because 
it is inconsistent with what they think our character to be; 
and second, because it compels them to revise their judgment 
of us. Therefore, because "as a man thinketh in his heart, 
so is he," it is immensely vital to our sincerity and transparency 
of heart that our conduct should always square with our habitual 
desires. If we fail here we fail really to be Christians because 
of several reasons. 

If our conduct is inconsistent with our desires, we are not genuine. 
Our outer life becomes a pose, an assumed role, an impersonal 
thing, a lie. 

Because we strike a blow at our moral integrity and are in 
spiritual anarchy where neither our own spirit or the Spirit of 
God is in control. 

Because when our outer conduct varies from that precise 
requirement of our inner desires we kill those inner desires and 

115 



116 PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 

our character is undermined and goes to pieces. One reason 
why a lie is so Satanic is because in conduct it defies the reign 
of the most sacred part of our inner life — our moral judgment, 
which lies back of our consciences. When this is outraged, we 
face moral disaster. 

Therefore, we imperil the very unity of our personalities when 
our friends see our conduct merely as a series of unrelated 
acts instead of the outshining of a steady spirit that does not 
swerve from its dominant desire. 

The secret of conduct that moulds character consists in letting 
our moral judgments rule the desires of our heart. Our moral 
judgments must issue from the teaching of the Spirit of God as 
He reveals Himself to the humble, open, listening heart. A 
Christian who is giving over the daily control of his inner de- 
cisions to God in trustful obedience finds his will acting in the 
outer world of conduct in perfect harmony with his moral judg- 
ments. If it rebels momentarily it is quickly humbled by con- 
fession and made to make things right in obedience again. It is 
as Matheson says: 

" My will is not my own 
Till Thou hast made it Thine; 
If it would reach a monarch's throne, 
It must its crown resign. 
It only stands unbent 
Amid the clashing strife, 
When on Thy bosom it has leant, 
And found in Thee its life." 

The difficulties of many Christians in facing the problems of 
conduct would be few, if only they settled the question of what 
should rule in their hearts, whether or not Jesus Christ should 
in all things occupy the foremost place; they could then quietly 
trust that control to express itself in conduct. The counsel we 
need, then, is this: it is all-important that, in dealing with con- 
duct, we deal with our inner states and not with our outer ex- 
pressions. If I get angry, no one has to tell me to flash my eyes 
— they obey the desire instantly; if I really love any one, no 
one has to tell me to be thoughtful and tender. In other words, 
conduct should be automatic with the inner desires. 

If the natural outflow of our inner judgments and desires is 
to be through conduct, then we may well ask how we are guided 



PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 117 

in forming our judgments. For a Christian the path is plain: 
We form our moral judgments through the teachings of the 
Bible, especially those of Jesus Christ; through the experience 
of his disciples in all ages; and the impulses of the heart guided 
in reply to prayer. The teachings of the Bible become the 
norm whereby we discover the principles that accord with the 
Spirit of God; and as we, in prayer, submit our conduct to the 
daily scrutiny of our Lord, He speaks through our conscience, 
confirming those moral judgments that have been formed 
within us as a result of knowing the teaching. Therefore, it is 
needful that there should be constant study of the Bible if one 
is to be guided in the problems of conduct. 

When once a moral judgment is formed, the problem of con- 
duct respecting it ought to vanish for the Christian. For ex- 
ample, my moral judgment sides with God in saying that it is 
wrong to lie, to steal, to be impure, to hate my brother; there- 
fore lying, stealing, impure conversation and hatred are impos- 
sible for me if my spirit rules. There is no problem of conduct 
in all this— there is only the problem of keeping my spirit obe- 
dient to God. 

The real problems of conduct, however, centre around those 
things about which our moral judgments are not yet formed. 
It is not the problem of choosing between right and wrong, 
but the wisdom of choosing from among all possible things 
the best things. As the number of choices in our power grows 
larger the good often is the enemy of the best, and the Chris- 
tian must find some active working principles that will guide 
in this choice so that conduct will always express our truest 
life. 

In thinking about such principles we might list them under 
three heads: (1) The principles that relate to purely personal 
decisions affecting conduct. (2) The principles of conduct 
that govern our relation to others. (3) The principles of con- 
duct that underlie our working together with God. 

I. The principles that relate to purely personal decisions affecting 

conduct. 

(1) The intimate connection between what is a personal good 
and the spirit of thanksgiving to God. We always find a quick 
instinctive response of gratitude when we receive something 
that we look upon as a good. It is one of the delicate tests that 



118 PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 

come to mean more as we grow in Christian experience. One 
is not thankful for anything that is recognized instinctively as 
an evil. The closer we walk with God the more eagerly we 
long for a daily experience of the word: "The blessing of the 
Lord it maketh rich and addeth no sorrow therewith." There- 
fore, when debating whether a certain line of conduct is one that 
may be entered into rightly, one may well ask the question: 
" Can I honestly thank God for the opportunity to do this be- 
cause it will bring good to my character?" If there is not a 
spontaneous spirit of thanksgiving arising from the conviction 
that this opportunity would be good for the soul, that line of 
conduct should be tested further by some of the following prin- 
ciples before committing oneself to it. This connection be- 
tween what is a good and the spirit of thanksgiving is sug- 
gested in the words of Paul to Timothy. "Every creature of 
God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it be received with 
thanksgiving; for it is sanctified through the word of God 
and prayer" (I Tim. 4 : 45). 

(2) The 'principle of the abiding peace of God in which the con- 
science is at rest. Nothing has such a hair-trigger sensitiveness 
in our hearts as the sense of God's peace. Any act or line of 
conduct that causes us to lose that sense of peace is mani- 
festly not consistent with the inner states of the heart con- 
trolled by God's Spirit. It is a legitimate question to ask: 
" Is there a sense of peace in thinking of this line of conduct ? " 
When it is withheld the chances are that one has not looked 
at the question from all sides or else the moral judgment has 
either not been placed under the clear light of God's Spirit or 
is warped by wilfulness. One should wait with the open, 
teachable heart of a little child until the sense of peace comes. 

(3) The principle of conditioned freedom. The Christian life 
is a free life and not intended to be under any yoke of bondage. 
Its conduct is not meant to be governed by rules and regula- 
tions about things : We are free spirits. The guiding prin- 
ciples of choice in all details of conduct of a free life should 
centre about the question whether a given conduct, although 
lawful, is expedient for a certain time or place. For example, 
I may be free to improve my talent for music by practising two 
hours on a piano; but if that right conduct keeps a tired mother 
awake who is suffering with headache, the right thing becomes 
inexpedient for me because it cuts across the law of love; 
therefore I willingly condition my freedom for the sake of an- 



PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 119 

other. Furthermore, we need to ask also: "Will this course 
of action bring me under its power and dominate me?" For 
example, I may enjoy the fascinations of a novel and find it 
often a rest and stimulus. But there may be times when it 
exerts such a spell over my imagination as to unfit me for days 
to do my duty and keep my feet on the earth. Therefore, I 
condition my freedom to read at all times, for the sake of a 
higher law that I want to obey. Yet again one should ask 
oneself: "Will this line of conduct give me a larger apprecia- 
tion of God and strengthen His hold on my life?" This is 
often illustrated in the choice of our pleasures. Certain of 
them may leave us refreshed, exhilarated, with a sense of peace 
and of the beauty of God; with a new appreciation of physical 
relaxation and mental refreshment, that makes us open- 
doored to God, in new responsiveness and enthusiasm. Others 
may leave us without refreshment, with dulness of spirit, and 
a slump in our ideals. It is right to have pleasure, but if I 
have any care for my body as the temple of God I condition my 
freedom to do certain legitimate things because they do not 
help me to keep the spontaneous child spirit of delight in the 
God of all life. 

II. The principles that govern our relation to others. 

(1) The principle of love applied in our own relationships will 
guide much of our conduct. Love will consider another and 
strive to build up the life of Christ in another. The very fact 
that there is love in the heart implies that there is a relation- 
ship, which brings also a responsibility and exerts a power that 
makes it impossible for one to act independently of this rela- 
tion of love. We can no longer live unto ourselves if we look 
at others as those to whom we owe love. The relation of love 
will not mean that we will always do what others want us to 
do. Our love must be a blend of firmness and willingness; it 
may mean the use of all our influence to get others to desist 
from some line of conduct or it may mean the giving up of 
our freedom to do certain things for their sakes. But the fact 
that we love will lead us into wise paths, although they may be 
different ones from what we desired. 

(2) We can often know what is right for us if we think of the 
principle of the social conscience which recognizes that the liberty 
of one must not be a stumbling-block to another. The very fact 
that we do not live on a desert island but in a community of 



120 PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 

people with whom we are socially related, involves shaping 
our conduct according to what is for the good of our neighbor. 
"Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbor's good" 
(I Cor. 10 : 24). It is not always easy to know where personal 
rights and social responsibility begin, but most of us are over- 
zealous about our individual rights and are slow in yielding to 
the common good. It is the undisciplined spirit of adolescence. 
Freedom to think has its dangers as well as its virtues, and we 
want to be very sure that we are not imposing our personal 
point of view and preferences upon the community with which 
we are related. "It always used to rub me the wrong way," 
a girl once said, " when my mother used to say, ' Do just as you 
think best, my dear/ and yet I knew that if I really did do what 
I preferred the family would feel injured. Why was the issue 
put up to me as a personal one, when really it was a social 
one ? Young as I was, I could see through that fallacy." We 
are not all as discerning as this girl or else we would not spend 
so much time chafing over situations in which the social con- 
science challenged our personal preferences. We need, rather, 
to learn to detect more quickly the times when this principle 
should take precedence and adjust our moral judgments to the 
social needs. 

(3) The principle of social influence also must be regarded. 
There are certain lives weaker than our own in strength of char- 
acter, to whom we owe a special responsibility. Our strength 
must not be at the expense of the weaker. It was said of our 
Lord: "A bruised reed he shall not break and the smoking 
flax he will not quench." In other words, He lived so that 
the bruised lives were not weakened but strengthened by His 
presence. This responsibility for the "little ones" of the king- 
dom is a big one. We are not held to account for all the weak 
ones of earth but for those with whom we are personally re- 
lated. There are few lines of conduct so important as to lead 
us to shatter holy ideals or blur the moral vision of others in 
following them. Sometimes we need to think straight on the 
subject of vital moral ideals as over against personal leanings. 
We do not need to cease from disregarding certain ideals that 
some people hold if they are personal idiosyncrasies on their 
part and not vital to spiritual truth as taught by our Lord. 
There are certain artificial standards that some confuse with 
spiritual life and seek to impose on all Christians, Absurd 



PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 121 

situations often arise when one is hard put in deciding what is 
right. For example, one artistic friend found herself work- 
ing with Christians who considered color in clothing a mark of 
a worldly life and the wearing of white shoes on a hot day 
incompatible with a spiritual influence. The natural questions 
those non-conformists had to face was whether these offenses 
were causing others to stumble or whether there was a larger 
responsibility for straight thinking and discrimination be- 
tween real and artificial standards that it was their duty to 
face courageously. It is often easier to give in for the sake of 
peace, but one is more likely to gain a permanent peace by fac- 
ing the issue squarely and challenging such mental confusion 
of standards ; this will help people in the end to a truer concep- 
tion of those things that are worth dying for. There is a mod- 
ern Pharisaism that "strains at a gnat and swallows a earner' 
that needs to be met in a fearless spirit of love. If some of 
those artificial standards can be put where they really belong, 
as the harmless personal fancies of individuals, we shall then be 
free to drive hard at those real ideals that ought to influence 
us all more powerfully than they do. 

(4) The Christian principle of voluntary sacrifice for others 
because of the example and expectation of our Lord should control 
a larger part of our conduct than it usually does. " Hereby know 
we love, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to 
lay down our lives for the brethren" (I John 3 : 16). It is good 
for us to practise the habit of self-discipline and self-restraint 
in matters of conduct in order that we may not become flabby 
in our moral muscle. The best cure for self-indulgence is vol- 
untary sacrifice for Christ's sake. We need to conserve our 
vigor for large tasks and practise self-control in our conduct. 
There is ample motive for this so long as we live among people 
who are limited when we are free, who are in need when we have 
plenty. It is our privilege to make some real sacrifice that costs, 
for the sake of others. This ought often to decide matters of 
conduct about which we may be in doubt. Even if it be right 
to follow a given course, it may be best to forego it for the ton- 
ing up of our moral fibre. 



122 PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 

III. The principles of conduct that underlie our working together 

with God. 

(1) The purpose of our life determines a large part of our con- 
duct. Certain things that are good in themselves may become 
wrong for us if they hinder our larger purpose. A sense of 
responsibility for a task puts us on our honor to do our best 
work. This may mean the giving up of certain things in order 
that our purpose may be carried out. What may be right for 
my friend may be wrong for me because of the end I have 
chosen to attain. Every purpose requires concentration and 
the narrowing of interests for the time being, and it is well 
worth while, just because we may not do everything we can do, 
to sketch our purpose in vivid outline. This would not involve 
merely the purpose of a day or a month, but the perspective of 
a series of years; we can then fill in the days with purposes 
that will round out our objective so that life will have sequence 
and meaning and not be a series of unrelated acts. 

(2) // we have the perspective of a life which is consciously fol- 
lowing the unfolding of God's purpose our scale of values will be 
changed. This will settle many questions of conduct. Among 
the possible choices are some that have an abiding value in life; 
in the larger horizon they assume more importance. For ex- 
ample, a friendship may be difficult and cause one to debate the 
possible course of action. If one looks at the friendship as a 
transient experience of a year or two it will not seem worth 
while to perpetuate it, and one may let it go deliberately. But 
if one looks at a friendship as the beginning of an endless union 
leading up to God Himself, then in the perspective of the eternal 
life it is worth while to decide on conduct that will unfold and 
deepen the heart of friendship, realizing that our relationships 
here are the beginning of timeless bonds. Thus our relation 
to God brings us to see everything from His point of view and 
may lead us to do more than others may think necessary in 
faithfulness to our personal relationships. 

As we keep all these principles in our minds and make them 
our rule of faith and practice we find it easier to make wise de- 
cisions about what we will or will not do, easier to find freedom 
for our spirits to grow. There are many people who prefer to 
live in a world that is catalogued; where everything has a label 
telling precisely what is "right" and what is "wrong." It is 



PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 123 

quite possible to live happily this way if one is a little child 
mentally, or if one does not want to think because of laziness, 
or overcaution, or fear of venturing. If one can trust implic- 
itly some wise man to do the thinking and make rules with 
authority, life becomes simple, and it would have to stay sim- 
ple, devoid of all the outreach of spirit and tangle of human 
wills that makes this world interesting. But if we are going 
to read many books, and rub up against many people, and if 
we yearn for the big world of life, there will be gaps unfilled by 
rules, and a conflict of authority that will in the end drive us 
back to Jesus Christ as our only authority. As we search His 
teachings we shall find principles but no rules, and we shall find 
that He trusts us to apply those principles to conduct. His 
big conflict with the Pharisees was the effort to guide them by 
principles when they insisted on having inflexible rules. The 
secret of character is inner control instead of outer authority. 

People look at the details of our conduct and judge our char- 
acter by the precise, habitual translation of our inner principles 
into outer life. They are drawn or repelled by the kind of 
character translation they see. Their trust in us helps us to 
express our ideals better and our expression inspires them 
to like ideals. Thus character becomes contagious through 
conduct and conduct alone produces character. 

BIBLE STUDY XIV 
Christian Conduct 

I. The secret of growth in character. 

Read II Cor. 3 : 17-18; II Peter 3 : 18; Phil. 3 : 12-14. Notice in 
each of these passages the sense of a time element, a process, and a growth 
in the making of a character. The spur to growth is found in the per- 
sonal association with Jesus Christ, who makes us long to be like Him. 
Love is the greatest transforming power, and the "love of Christ constrain- 
eth us" until we are transformed into His likeness. When we make it 
our ambition to please Christ so that there is, each day, an honest obedi- 
ence to His teaching we have the secret of a moral dynamic that works 
out in us a character that is consonant with our belief. 

II. Standards that are a guide for Christian conduct. 

(1) Read I Cor. 6 : 12 and Gal. 5:1. We must preserve the glorious 
freedom of the Spirit. In these passages Paul combats the pagan teach- 
ing of expediency which would allow indulgence so long as it did not get 
beyond certain limits. This same teaching has been promoted by many 
undiscerning Christians to-day in such words as "It is all right to follow 



124 PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 

your desires for pleasure and indulgence, but be discreet enough to stop 
in time; do not overdo the matter, for it would not be expedient for your 
health and influence. " On the other hand, Paul exclaims: "Do you say 
that all things are lawful but not all things are expedient ? Yes, all things 
are lawful, but / will not be brought under the power of any." The teach- 
ing of expediency says: " Follow your desires," but the freedom of the Spirit 
says that our desires must be held captive by the one great desire, viz.: 
that in all things Jesus Christ shall reign; that He must have everything 
in His control; and that we dare not give up our freedom in Him to follow 
anything else. Everything may be lawful, but does it interfere with our 
freedom in Him ? Pleasure then becomes not a desire or end in itself, 
but a means of fitting us for a better service of Christ. How would this 
principle sift our pleasures if we applied it to our daily conduct? 

Questions 
Am I under the power of any self-indulgence? Do the things that I 
like to do weaken or strengthen my appreciation of the things of the 
Spirit? 

(2) Read I Tim. 4 : 4 and Titus 1 : 15. Here we see the principle of 
judging a thing to be right or wrong according to the purity of the Spirit. 
It isn't the thing itself that is wrong but the use to which it is put. The 
question to be asked is whether a given thing ministers to self-destruction 
or to God's glory. The more the purifying stream of God's life flows 
through our hearts, the more our conscience and mind will be so cleansed 
that we will look upon the world with pure eyes, seeing all things pure. 
When our minds are not clean everything takes on the color of our own 
impure mind and becomes to us actually impure. 

Questions 
Would it be desirable, if possible, to remove everything that tempts the 
human spirit? What is it that leads us into temptation? See James 
1 : 13, 14. What is the relation between thanksgiving and prayer and the 
decision about whether a thing is good for us, I Tim. 4 : 4. What kinds 
of things are smirched for us ? Is it because of their inherent evil, or have 
they taken on the color of our thoughts? What am I doing, and what 
might I do to enlarge the horizon of purity around my life? 

(3) Read I Cor. 8 : 1-13. Conduct is based not on knowledge but on love 
that buildeth. See Isaiah 58 : 10-12 for the vocation of the Christian in 
relationships with others. 

Questions 
How does Paul discuss the relative values of pleasures in I Cor. 8 : 13? 
When does a pleasure cease to be a pleasure? What determines our de- 
sires to follow certain lines of conduct? What causes desires to change? 
What is the appeal to our ambition and purpose in Isaiah 48 : 12? Does 
this appeal to serve others really govern my choices of what I will do? 

(4) Read I Cor. 9 : 19 and Matt. 16 : 24, 25. Our manner of living ought 
to be determined by the necessity of carrying out our share of the work of win- 
ning others to Christ. Is any Christian exempt from the call to sacrifice 
for the sake of Jesus Christ? How would this affect our daily conduct 
if we believed this to be a test of whether we were truly following Christ? 
What am I doing for others that means a real laying down of fife? 



PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT 125 

(5) Read I Cor. 9 : 22-24. The fear lest we fail our Lord ought to guide 
us in some of our conduct. Is it possible to inspire others to a life that 
we fail to enter ourselves? When are we most likely to fail? What re- 
lation has self -discipline and self-control with the victory of our spirit? 

III. Ourselves and others. 

Having settled the principles of the inner life it remains to be said that 
just as the upbuilding of others is to be the objective so the upbuilding 
of ourselves to be more efficient, skilled workmen for God is a legitimate 
objective provided that a balance is preserved between both. We can 
ask all things not alone for others, but for ourselves, in order to glorify our 
Lord better. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE APPROACH TO THOSE WHO LIVE AN 
UNBALANCED LIFE 

One of the greatest hindrances to the progress of the king- 
dom among non-Christians comes from the unsymmetrical lives 
of Christians who present a deformed, distorted Christ to the 
world. Most of us personify the caricature instead of the char- 
acter of Jesus Christ. There are a few features emphasized 
out of proportion to the others, and the result is a reflection upon 
the perfection of the Christian life. 

It is important that we help those who are living an unbal- 
anced Christian life, for they are usually unhappy and dis- 
contented either because they are conscious of their lack of 
balance or because they feel that others do not appreciate them. 
At the root there are usually these reasons why so many of us 
live unbalanced lives: 

(1) A lack of humility. It is so easy to be content with our 
own point of view and the particular emphasis on truth that 
pleases us. We see things so distinctly that the very distinct- 
ness causes other objects to be blurred. We are satisfied with 
our own vision of truth and forget that no one individual can 
see all the truth at once. Our experiences in life, our inheri- 
tance, our temperament, our age, our work, our individual need 
have all in a large measure defined our point of view. We have 
such good reasons for believing ourselves to be right that we 
fail to see how others can have equally good reasons for believ- 
ing themselves to be right. We shall always be unbalanced 
until we own to the truth that each of us sees " through a glass 
darkly/' until we are willing to learn from others in humility. 
Then and only then can we begin to grow strong where we are 
weak and see where before we were blind. 

(2) A lack of horizon. Each of us is a specialist, and rightly 
so. What we need is to see our specialty related to the whole. 
We work in our own little garden and have the worm's-eye 
view of every flower and shrub. It is only when we add 

126 



AN UNBALANCED LIFE 127 

to this the bird's-eye view of our garden as it is related to the 
great landscape and the far-away stretches of horizon that we 
get a true perspective and balance. If we were to study the 
little habits of our life it would disclose our lack of horizon. 
When we talk only with people who agree with us, or read books 
that say what we have always thought, when we are critical of 
any new ideas before we have proved their value, or shut our 
ears to what others are saying because it opposes our notions, 
we are thereby limiting our power to find a permanent balance 
for our life. 

(3) A failure to co-ordinate all our experiences in Jesus Christ 
as the centre in whom " all things hold together." It is in the uni- 
versal personality of our Lord that we see the most perfect 
balance of all virtues and powers. His point of view is as wide 
as the world and eternity and in Him everything has its true 
emphasis and importance. If we studied the life of our Lord, 
appreciating the perfect symmetry of it, we would find it easier 
to keep from mental astigmatism and lopsidedness. We ought 
to challenge each new experience and point of view until we see 
how it co-ordinates with His life. If it does not fit into His 
pattern we can safely reject it; if it does fit we dare not go on 
without adding it to the expression of our Christian life. 

It takes courage to face facts and look at ourselves in the light 
of the perfection of our Lord and then resolutely go to work to 
correct the thinking that is awry and disciplining our spirits in 
our weak points. But honesty and courage will solve more 
than half the problem, and the end is so to be desired that it is 
worth all the pain and cost. 

The qualities of Christian character may be listed in these 
groups. There are those qualities that are inner and personal, 
there are others that develop through our relations with other 
individuals, and there are those that grow in us as an outcome 
of our relation to our community and generation. Under the 
personal qualities we include devoutness, purity, kindness, 
integrity, ambition, temperance, and patience. Under the 
head of our relationship with others we list forgiveness, inter- 
cession, sacrifice, influence, compassion. In the list of qualities 
of character that develop as a result of our relation to our com- 
munity are included civic interest, the relief of suffering, Chris- 
tian citizenship, revolt against injustice, and the succoring of 
the weak. 



12S AN UNBALANCED LIFE 

There are Christians who conceive of the Christian life as 
embracing but one group of these virtues. Their influence is 
weakened and ineffective because of this limitation, while the 
outside world of observers who realize in some dim way that 
Christ personified all these qualities expect the Christian to 
be like his Lord in this. We sometimes find people who are 
interested in others and eager to bring people to know Christ. 
They intercede in prayer and appeal to them, and yet they are 
so lacking in the personal gifts of patience, gentleness, or in- 
tegrity that the appeal is valueless. It is as Emerson says: 
"What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that 
I cannot hear what you say to the contrary." 

Again, we see devout people of great integrity and purity 
of heart who are content with the refinements of personal 
Christian character and are indifferent to the claims of the 
community and the non-Christians whom they meet. They are 
so content with saving their own souls that they forget the needs 
of others. There is also another class of unbalanced Christians 
who see vividly the need of the community and stop content 
with reformation and the relief of injustice, yet are uninterested 
in personal devoutness and purity or in intercession for others 
that they may know the Christ. 

Whenever any one deliberately denies expression to any of 
these three groups of qualities, the vision of the Christ is dis- 
torted and the fulness of the divine life is restrained. We are 
in sore need to-day of recognizing this lack of balance in life 
and, as honest Christians, we need to clear ourselves of this 
charge and help others to release new spiritual energies that 
the kingdom of our Lord may come more speedily. 

But even more serious is the lack of balance that is present 
so often among the states of personal character: devoutness 
without clean lips and purity of action; integrity without pa- 
tience and kindness and forgiveness; or purity and integrity 
without moderation or devoutness. It is here especially that 
we meet the question of personal influence over our friends 
and acquaintances, and we fail pitifully to win their respect 
for our Christian character by the lack of balance in the per- 
sonal expression of our inner life. 

We all see our need at this point but we want to know how 
we are going to help ourselves or others to transform this per- 
sonal caricature of the inner Christian life into a true Christian 



AN UNBALANCED LIFE 129 

character. What are the secrets of growth in grace until we 
attain more nearly unto " the measure of the stature of the ful- 
ness of Christ ?" 

In the first place, we need to become self-conscious in this 
matter. It would help us much if we listed all these qualities 
of character in a book and in the presence of God held a self- 
examination at regular seasons, asking ourselves where we have 
failed to manifest these marks of the Christian life. And, as we 
face our lack of balance in any particular way, we shall be able 
through intercession to develop a sensitiveness of spirit that will 
guard us from future shortcomings. 

Fellowship with other Christians who are strong in the points 
where we are weak is a great stimulus to our own growth. Here 
is where we can enrich our lives by surrounding ourselves with 
many Christian friends each of whom can make a special con- 
tribution of strength to us. " Character," as has been said, 
"is caught, and not taught," and we need the fellowship with 
those who have highly contagious cases of the special personal 
qualities wherein we are lacking. 

We also need a laboratory for demonstration purposes. 
Many of us wonder why we are so often surrounded by people 
who seem to call out just the opposite states of character which 
we know to be the fruit of the Spirit of God. They come into 
our horizon as test cases for the application of the very phase 
of character that we need. We grow strong only by the exer- 
cise of the little power we have. For example, we can only grow 
in the grace of forgiveness when we find in the laboratory of life 
some one who needs our forgiveness; integrity is best mani- 
fested when it is the positive reaction against some form of in- 
sincerity; devoutness only grows real when we have deliberately 
to choose it in the midst of an undevout companionship. And 
love becomes strong and deep not so much when it is the line 
of least resistance, because we are borne along by natural sym- 
pathy and congeniality, but when we must deliberately culti- 
vate it by a decision of will whereby we determine to be con- 
siderate and tender and sacrificing, and trustful with those to 
whom we are not naturally drawn. All these personal states 
of Christian character must be deliberately shown toward those 
who do not naturally call out these spiritual energies; and we 
shall discover that the very resistance which we meet will de- 
velop spiritual vigor and a well-rounded life. 



130 AN UNBALANCED LIFE 

It is love itself that helps most in our efforts for balance. The 
wider our sympathies, the more people we take into our hearts, 
the more we will hunger and thirst to measure up to their ex- 
pectations, so that we may not fail them in any way. In the 
same way we long not to disappoint God who loved us when we 
w r ere unlovable and created in us the desire to be like Him. 

In closing, there is one inner spirit that is necessary to all 
balance of life, and that is the spirit of self -discipline and self- 
control. We must learn to " endure hardness as good soldiers " 
and be willing to let the discipline of our spirits, in all those 
states where we are lacking, go on steadily. Every victory we 
win means new power to serve and a larger sphere of influence. 
It would be cheerless and difBcult to hold ourselves to the spirit 
of discipline were it not balanced up by the other gifts of God, 
viz., power and love. Through God's power and through the 
realization of His unfailing love we can endure the struggle to 
discipline our spirits until the balanced life is not only a state 
of inner experience but an outshining character seen and read 
of all men. 

BIBLE STUDY XV 
A Well-Poised Life 

Read II Tim. 1 : 7. The threefold gift of God to our life; power, 
love, and discipline. All three are needed to keep one in balance. Power 
that is not balanced by love is cruel and autocratic; love that is not 
strengthened by discipline becomes mere sentimentality. Discipline that 
is not balanced by power or love becomes useless and lifeless. Every 
Christian needs the blend of the three; and they are held in co-ordination 
only as they are controlled and developed by the Spirit of God. 

(1) Power — our capacity for influence; all that goes to make up our 
assets in life; all our resources, and potential leadership. Some have so 
much that they are led away by it; some have so little that they are weak- 
ened. Read the account of two people who had great power not bal- 
anced by love and not controlled by God's Spirit, (a) Jezebel. Read 
I Kings 16 : 30, 31; ch. 18 : 13; ch. 19 : 1, 2; ch. 21 : 1-16. (6) Saul. 
Acts 7 : 58 to 8 : 3; ch. 9 : 1, 2. Read also the account of a man whose 
power was inadequate for a great test and yet who was able to do the 
humanly impossible thing when God's power controlled him. Luke 22 : 
54-62 and Acts 2 : 14-24, 38-41. See also Acts 22 : 3-11; ch. 9 : 20-22. 
What is the secret of this transformation? See Phil. 2 : 13: 

"It was said of that he always seemed a man of weak will but that 

an iron will seemed to be working through him." 

{Forbes Robinson.) 



AN UNBALANCED LIFE 131 

See Eph. 3 : 20 for the assurance of God's power beyond all our asking. 
Therefore the message of Romans 12 : 1 and II Cor. 4 : 7 (see the Wey- 
mouth translation) is necessary for all of us who would be well poised in 
our power; otherwise our power becomes dangerous. 

(2) Love. — Read I Cor. 13 for the description of the active energy of 
love. Love is not a feeling or emotion merely, but an active will toward 
another manifesting itself in voluntary self-sacrifice for another's good. 
The pleasure and emotion in love is dependent on the response to the 
purpose of the one who loves and the appreciation of the cost of self- 
sacrifice. 

Read Luke 9 : 40-50. What is it that called out the love of this woman ? 

Read I John 3 : li-18. How do we recognize love in God? Can there 
be true love apart from the principle of sacrifice? 

Love attains its purity and power only as it is selfless; it becomes self- 
less when it is controlled by God. Therefore, love, too, can only be poised 
when it finds its centre outside of itself — in God and in others. 

(3) Discipline.— Self-indulgence may be conquered in two ways: by 
abstinence and by self-control. Self-control is more difficult than ab- 
stinence. Read Matt. 18 : 8-10. Here our Lord indicates the principle 
of abstinence as far better than losing one's life. Abstinence from a known 
evil is always necessary but self-control is needed in the use of legitimate 
things. Abstinence in legitimate things is often necessary for the sake 
of proving to ourselves that we are not under the power of anything. 

Read I Cor. 9 : 19, 25-27. Here discipline and self-control are the means 
by which the purpose is attained. It is because of the goal, "that I may 
attain," that we pay the price of discipline. 

Read I Tim. 4 : 7, last clause. Discipline is for the purpose of building 
up reserve power and moral muscle. God pity the man or woman who 
has no goal or purpose in life that makes "enduring hardness" worth 
while! Discipline is only valuable aa it reinforces power and love; it 
does not become an end in itself. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE APPROACH TO THOSE WHO ARE PEELING 
AFTER REALITY 

There is a growing hunger in the heart of most people who are 
thinking about their religious needs. They insist that reality 
shall be the touchstone for all their thinking. "God is not 
real to me; how does He become so to any one?" is a question 
often asked. If ever there was an age in which people were 
unwilling to accept spiritual truth merely because some author- 
ity says that it is true, this is the age. They insist upon finding 
the core of reality before they believe and, like Thomas of old, 
want to put their fingers on the very nail-prints in the hands of 
their Master before they can say: "My Lord and my God." 
Unlike our Lord, we are often impatient with this quest and do 
not take the time to show these would-be disciples how to find 
the kind of evidence they require. 

At the outset we need to remind ourselves that all of us 
started out in life with a capacity for God and for spiritual 
reality. As little children the unseen spiritual mysteries were 
more real than the external world about us, but it became 
increasingly difficult to hold the vision of them as material things 
began to absorb our attention. The world became full of dis- 
tracting "things," and the single eye of the heart could not 
compete with the thousand eyes of the mind. But we never 
forgot what we had once realized and we have thirsted to find 
it again. We discover that spiritual reality is like the reality 
of music. We may be born with an ear for it, but we all know 
that it takes more than an ear for music to make it a great 
reality in our life. It is the prize awarded to a disciplined life. 
Let us look at some of the tests by which we find reality in any- 
thing. 

(1) Reality depends upon attention. We enter a room filled 
with lovely things; our attention is held by a bowl of nastur- 
tiums on a table. It recalls a friend's garden, our comradeship, 

132 



THE SEARCH FOR REALITY 133 

and love and joy in the relation with that friend, and although 
we sit there in that room in the body, we are dead to it all; for 
we are living in the spirit and in the realities of life as our atten- 
tion is held by that bowl of flowers. Now, if anything so simple 
as a flower brings reality to our spirit when we fix our atten- 
tion on it, how much more could the things of life and the 
spirit become vivid if we let Jesus Christ hold our attention. 
Only that part of life to which we attend is ever real. Per- 
haps if we recall our Lord to our mind that act alone will make 
Him real. 

(2) Time also brings reality. A great friend quietly slipped 
away into God's presence before any one suspected the possi- 
bility of it. For days afterward her fellow workers said to 
one another: "I know that she is gone but I cannot realize it." 
But as time went on and as the many services she had given had 
to be taken on by others, and the gaps that were left came to 
light, the reality of her going became a fact of consciousness 
that brought a greater ache of heart as the days went by. 
They not only knew that she had gone but they felt it and 
realized it. So it is with our experience with God. It takes 
time to realize how all our life is empty without Him and it 
also takes time to realize how fully He slips into our lives and 
becomes interwoven with all our experiences. It may help us 
to find Him real if we look back into the years and remember 
all the ways in which we have felt His touch on our lives. " I 
girded thee, even though thou didst not know me, " is the word 
that came to the people of old, and it is just as true to-day. He 
will become real as we take time to let Him make Himself a 
real part of our continued experiences. 

(3) A fact becomes real in proportion to our understanding of it. 
Perhaps this may have been illustrated in our experience as it 
was in the case of one woman. She had bought goods for years 
in a large shop where the saleswomen were to her no more than 
so many automatic hands to take down goods from the shelves. 
One day she came to know, through her church work, the 
struggles of one of these girls to support her invalid mother. 
As she began to understand the problems of this one girl, she 
discovered that the next time she entered the shop the faces 
of all the saleswomen began to stand out in vivid reality, and 
she almost forgot her business in wondering how many others 
were having the same economic struggle. In the same way 



134 THE SEARCH FOR REALITY 

other things in life grow real as we come to understand them. 
It is equally true in spiritual as well as material matters. God 
becomes real as we come to know and understand His character 
and will through a continued study of His revealed truth. 
u Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord." 

(4) Reality depends upon the use we make of anything. The 
more a material thing or any interest of our life fits into our 
daily need the more vivid it becomes. The friend to whom we 
scarcely ever write or whom we rarely see tends to disappear 
from our consciousness. We get along so easily without that 
comradeship that our sense of reality grows dim. Many people 
do not find God real because they get along so easily without 
Him and do not include Him as an indispensable part of their 
daily life. They hear Him spoken of on Sunday but never 
take Him into account in their business and plans and thinking. 
He can never reveal Himself until they make a place for Him 
which is empty unless He fills it. Then He becomes real. 

(5) Love also brings reality. It is like the developing fluid 
which brings out the clear outlines of the picture on the dull 
film. The things we care for most are the things we always 
notice. An artist who loves beauty sees it clearly wherever 
he goes; the woman who loves babies always sees them first in 
a crowd. To the lover, his friend is the one outstanding figure. 
To the one who loves a clean heart and truth and perfection, 
God grows vivid as the centre and source of it all. Perhaps 
the reason why some people cannot find God real is that they 
do not have pure desires and do not hunger and thirst after 
righteousness. 

(6) The absence of what we desire may make it real. A little 
boy on a ferry-boat was absorbed with delight at the sight of 
the shipping in the harbor. He ventured away from his mother 
and the other children to see the sights on the river. Soon the 
boat stopped and the people started to go. Suddenly the wail- 
ing voice^of the boy cried: " Where's my mother !" But she was 
close behind him and soon became joyously real to him — real 
in a way that she had not been a few minutes before when he 
was occupied with ships. So it is with many who want to find 
God. He is at hand all the time, waiting to reveal Himself; but, 
absorbed in other things, His children wander off until some 
change in circumstances creates a sense of apprehension and the 
cry " Where is my God I" comes involuntarily. This experience 



THE SEARCH FOR REALITY 135 

ought to prove to them that the very cry indicates that He is in 
the background of their lives if they will but turn and look 
to Him. 

One of the common mistakes people make in seeking reality 
is to confuse it with the sense of feeling. They want to feel 
near God, to feel His strength, to feel His companionship. If 
they stop to think, however, they will soon see that feeling 
plays a very uncertain role in our life and is not to be relied on 
as a true test of reality. Feeling is often uncontrollable; it 
sweeps over us like a tempest and then is gone. We may feel 
kindly toward a person one day and feel critical toward the 
same person the next day. Our temperature of feeling goes 
up and down with the weather, with our health, and with our 
temperamental quirks. So used are we to the freaks of feel- 
ing that we do our work without reference to it; if we did not, 
most of us would do little. 

We get rest only when we see that reality is not dependent on 
feeling alone but on willing and knowing. The last two are 
necessities; the first is a luxury. I first must know my friend 
as a fact of experience; I must also be willing to be related 
to that friend; I may feel a joy in the friendship but it cannot 
last or be real unless the knowing and willing are the foundations 
of the relationship. 

It is so with our relation to God. I must know Him as a 
fact of my experience and know Him in His true character and 
purposes toward me. Then I must be willing to relate myself 
to Him in obedience and friendship. Then He is a reality in 
my life whether I feel Him to be so or not. 

In the last analysis, the chief reason why God is not real 
to some people is the fact of their moral blindness. It is 
the "pure in heart" that have no difficulty in seeing God; 
it is our sins that "have hidden His face from us"; it is dis- 
obedience to His word that cuts us off from fellowship with 
Him. Unconfessed sin, unwillingness to put our daily life 
under the holy scrutiny of God, are like the " earth-born clouds " 
that rise to hide Him from our eyes. As surely as we face these 
causes and remove them, just so surely will God become vivid 
and real to our hearts. 



136 THE SEARCH FOR REALITY 

BIBLE STUDY XVI 
The Search for Reality 

I. Read II Cor. 4 : 1-6. God becomes real as we see Him in the face 
of Jesus Christ. Through contact with the historic person of Christ we 
discern God. John 14 : 8-9 satisfies our desire to know what God is like. 
What reason is given in II Cor. 4 : 3, 4 why the image of God is hidden from 
the minds of people? If God seems dim and far away, let us get a close 
look at Jesus Christ. 

II. Read Luke 24 : 25-27 and John 5 : 39, 40. God becomes real as 
we study the scriptures. Chinese Gordon said: "In times of coldness, 
when Christ recedes, I spend time on the writings and He becomes vivid 
and real." This will prove true for all of us as we open the mind and 
heart to the teachings. They find us in our conscience, and we know in 
the depths of our Spirit that we are face to face with God. The habit 
of recalling some word of Christ during the day often brings Him near so 
that He seems to be speaking to us with the intimacy of a friend. 

III. Read John 16 : 13, 14, and Heb. 3 : 7, 8, also Rev. 3 : 20. We 
find reality in the voice of God speaking to our conscience. Sometimes 
it is the inner prompting that makes us conscious of Him, and often it is 
the working out of circumstances or the illumination which comes from 
others. There are times when we find the words of Isaiah 45 : 5 as true 
of us as they were of Cyrus, and discover that God has laid his hand on 
us even when we did not know it. How many times we have been baffled 
in our thinking and at our wit's end, and then found help through some 
flash of light that fit up the truth for us and gave us the needed 
wisdom ! 

IV. Read John 14 : 21 and John 7 : 17. We discover God to be real 
in proportion as we enter into real dealings with Him and yield our will 
in obedience to His teaching. When we face the struggle of the soul that 
precedes a harmonizing of our will with His will, we soon gain a vivid 
experience with God. The doing makes the thinking real. People who 
are uncongenial do not discern one another, largely because of conflicting 
desires and tastes and wills. So it is with God; we discern Him only as 
we become one with Him. 

V. Matt. 5 : 8; Psalm 24 : 4; Matt. 17 : 2; I Tim. 1 : 5; and II Tim. 
2 : 22. God dwells in all purity and light and it is only the pure in heart 
who do see Him. It is not for the one who does not pay this price to say 
that God is not real. We must not swerve from our hatred of sin in all 
its forms if we would have God increasingly real to us. It is the one who 
loves beauty who actually sees beauty. There is no use in trying to 
convince some one who has no love for music that a sonata is beautiful; 
it must be in the heart first. 

VI. Matt. 28 : 19, 20; 25 : 31-46. We find God in reality as we seek 
Him among those who need Him. The promise of His presence is given 
to those who are carrying the word of fife to those who have not heard. 
It is doing this "unto the least of them" that helps us to find Him. 



THE SEARCH FOR REALITY 137 

"The healing of His seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain 
We touch Him in life's throng and press 
And we are whole again." 

(Whittier.) 

Questions for Thought 
What do I call real? Is it something I can picture or something I 
can feel or something that I know as a fact? Is faith a help to reality? 
In what way ? Why does anything seem to become more real if we share 
it with some one else? Why are feelings unreliable evidences of reality? 
What are the surest evidences? 



CHAPTER XVII 
DEVELOPING THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OP CHILDREN 

Most of us ought to have some of our richest opportunities 
for service in dealing with the religious life of children. They 
are with us in our homes, in school, and in the church, and 
respond so quickly to our personal interest in them when we 
take the pains really to know them and appreciate them. 

It takes an unusually genuine spirit to help children to know 
God. There are no more searching tests applied to our spiritual 
life than those administered by children who instinctively 
read our hearts; and it is because of our failure to meet these 
tests that we feel ourselves so often self-conscious and gauche 
in their presence. There are certain conditions that must be 
met if we would guide children spiritually. 

First and all the time we must be utterly natural. Any sug- 
gestion of an artificial manner repels at once. When speaking 
about spiritual realities a change of voice to a solemn and 
sepulchral tone, unlike the tones we would use in speaking of 
some every- day affair, is quickly detected, and the small boy 
or girl retires behind an impenetrable mask beyond reach of 
our influence. Children are so near to the kingdom of God 
that they think as naturally about spiritual matters as they do 
about material affairs, and an air of assumed constraint makes 
them conscious of an unpleasant lump somewhere within them 
and they want to run. 

They also demand reality. Any trace of cant is felt at once. 
It is only the spontaneous life of the heart that wins children. 
They want to know about living things and people and they 
want to know the truth. There is a vein of scepticism in the 
minds of most children that challenges statements or silently 
watches to see if statement and fact tally. Most of us have 
at least a partial remembrance of the eagle eye with which we 
used to watch grown folk and make our quiet discoveries and 
draw our crude conclusions. There were a few honest spirits 

138 



RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 139 

who spoke with crystal sincerity and dealt with us as real per- 
sons and we accepted them at once. Woe betide any one who 
cannot meet the eager direct look of a little child with the same 
frankness. 

A fine courtesy is also needed if we would win children. They 
are so aware of difference in size and age between them and us 
that they appreciate deeply the same respect for personality 
that we would show toward grown-ups. We little know what 
enduring pain we inflict on children when, for example, we laugh 
over their mistakes in the presence of others and ridicule their 
opinions as we would not dare ridicule the foolish talk of adults. 
Discourtesy kills childlike trust and contradicts the spirit of 
love. 

One must also have confidence in children if one would under- 
stand their spiritual life. There are rare gifts of the spirit 
that are the unconscious part of a child's religion, which we 
sophisticated grown folk might well envy. We need to see that 
the teaching is not all on our side; that the little ones can teach 
us if we are humble and that we can trust their spiritual in- 
stincts. Our confidence must be based on an appreciation of 
what we can count upon in them. Directness, faith, a sense of 
justice, simplicity of motive, spontaneous response to the ideal, 
an intense consciousness of God's personality, eagerness to 
" do something" — surely these are some of the marks of a child's 
spiritual life on which we can build character and find a basis 
for real comradeship. 

We will not get far in our work with children unless we have 
a childlike heart; not the condescending spirit that hopes to 
make an impression by childish imitations, or "talks down" 
to them, but that which comes from a real appreciation of a 
child's point of view and a joy in its companionship. It will 
do us good to revise our vocabulary and learn to say deep things 
in simple, one-syllable words. If we have this childlike heart 
we will also be free from sentimentality, which healthy-minded 
children resent. The reason that many of them usually pre- 
fer men to women is probably due to the fact that women so 
often make children feel conspicuous by their sentimental and 
personal remarks, whereas men are more matter of fact. There 
is nothing that embarrasses the ordinary child more than to be 
made to feel conspicuous. 

There are certain foundation-stones which should underlie 



140 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 

the spiritual character-building of children up to their early 
adolescence. Many of the difficulties of older youth would 
melt away if the early influences were what they should be. 

The first of these elemental needs concerns a true conception 
of God. He should be spoken of as a heavenly Father, who once 
revealed Himself to men in the person of Jesus Christ so that 
all people might know what He is like; that He has infinite 
power, infinite love, and infinite wisdom and holiness; that He 
made us and keeps us in life and wants us all to be like Him in 
our hearts. It is better to guide the imagination about what 
God our Father is like by the stories of what Jesus Christ said 
and did and by resemblances of God which an earthly father 
may show than by the inadequate conceptions of mediaeval art 
and pictures on charts. Many an older student often turns 
away from the thought of a personal God because of the limited 
attempts of art to picture Him. It is sad indeed when children 
have no experience of noble earthly fatherhood to supply con- 
crete expression to their conception of God. In such cases the 
vision of Jesus Christ must be given all the more vividness and 
reality. 

The spirit of love can be developed by the stories of the love 
of Jesus Christ toward sick folk, lepers, and blind men, and by 
teaching of His love of nature, of flowers and birds and every- 
thing that God has made. The child needs to be helped to 
express it through definite thankfulness and gratitude for all 
the ways in which the heavenly Father ministers to us. The 
habit of giving thanks each day for the new ways in which God's 
love has been discovered is one of the most important factors in 
helping a child to a real appreciation of the true character of 
God. In addition to the sense of God's love and care, great 
emphasis should be placed on the expectation of God that we 
should be right in heart, word, and deed and thought. He is 
the only One who can make and keep the heart clean. As chil- 
dren are learning the clear-cut distinctions between right and 
wrong in their daily experience their sensitiveness to a broken 
fellowship is keen. They know that they have need of a restored 
sense of oneness with God and the feeling that He is pleased 
with them. Their experience is confined to definite wrong- 
doings which lie heavy on their sensitive consciences, and often 
the first real experience of God's nearness comes when they con- 
fess their faults to Him and ask forgiveness. Just here it should 



RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 141 

be emphasized that children should be taught the need and 
value of confession of wrong-doing, for in no way can the educa- 
tion of the will for right choices be better secured. Many a 
child bears a weight that haunts it by night simply because it 
has not been helped to make a clean breast of it and enter into 
the relief of a sense of forgiving love. 

It is also necessary that the religious programme of children 
should concentrate on storing their minds with Bible facts, 
stories, and teachings. At the age of twenty a beautiful girl 
became blind. During the days of depression that followed 
she said: "I wish I had some comfort from my religion, but 
somehow my mind seems so empty. I can recall endless poems 
and Mother Goose rhymes and nature stories, but they don't 
help me now. Why didn't my teachers teach me Psalms and 
the sayings of Jesus Christ instead of those things? That is 
what I need now." She was indeed right. How can we expect 
to have the strength of God for all the testings and exigencies 
of life if our minds do not become a storehouse of God's teach- 
ings so that His spirit may be able to fulfil that promise of our 
Lord that He would bring to our remembrance those things 
that He has said to us. The Bible is so rich in story lore and 
simple teaching that no child ought to be defrauded of the in- 
heritance of moral strength and ideals and fellowship with Jesus 
Christ which comes from storing the mind with the words of the 
Bible. Nothing can equal the importance of this duty toward 
children if we ever expect them to have moral fibre and the ideals 
of Jesus Christ. 

In building up a Christian character in children we should 
teach them a great reverence for facts and the difference between 
a right and wrong use of the imagination. Much of the scepti- 
cism of early youth grows out of the shock of discovering that 
one's father or mother or teacher had proved untrustworthy in 
saying that fairy-tales were so when they weren't so. This is 
pre-eminently an age of reality when we are facing a type of 
child unknown to the past generation. The modern child 
through the "motion-picture" habit and the blatant realism 
of newspapers and magazines and popular books becomes 
sophisticated at a tender age and develops a subtle cynicism 
that has to be met with entire truthfulness on the part of any 
one who would teach him. A reverence for truth and trust in 
a truthful teacher who does not fail will do much to correct 



142 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 

the difficulties arising from suspicion later on. The joys of the 
imaginative life of children will be no less if they are taught the 
difference between what they see with the eyes of their mind 
and the eyes of their body. And they can be helped, too, to 
use their imaginations to think about things that are really 
true, and the mental pictures of Jesus Christ that can be created 
from the facts of His life, and the remembrance of beautiful 
and true experiences that have come into their life with people 
and things. All of this is a solemn obligation when we realize 
that we are dealing with the very foundation of character, and 
the basic distinctions between right and wrong — between sin- 
cerity and insincerity, and are responsible to our God, " with 
whom there is no variableness" and who "desireth truth in the 
inward parts." We owe it to every child to help it to live a 
life of utter truthfulness. 

Another indispensable element in the religious life of children 
is the spirit of obedience, not as an end in itself but as a means 
of co-operating with others for a common good. Fortunate 
are those little ones who learn it from loving parents; but there 
are abounding evidences that countless children never are taught 
obedience in their homes and so have no reverence toward God. 
Therefore the teacher has to help the child to see how every- 
thing in nature and life is held by the law of co-operation and 
how our highest happiness and perfection come only as we 
yield obedience to Jesus Christ. In proportion as children 
learn to love God they will want increasingly to please Him, but 
in the beginning they need to learn that love is only expressed 
and developed through a cheerful yielding to the will of love. It 
is as our Lord said: "He that hath my commandments and 
keepeth them he it is that loveth me." Children must be helped 
to see that disobedience destroys the loving relationship with 
their Father and makes it impossible for them to know Him. 
There are scores of analogies in daily experience that prove 
this : for instance, a child can never know how to play a piano 
unless it obeys the words of direction that are given it by the 
teacher. Obedience is the gateway to knowledge and power. 
It is the basis of all that reverence for God that will hold the 
child true in its later life. 

The characteristic of all youth is boundless energy and the 
desire to "do things"; therefore service for God is an indispensa- 
ble part of a child's religious life. We need to help children to 



RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 143 

see the possibilities for personal and group service by which 
they can follow in the steps of Jesus Christ. The " cup of cold 
water' ' given out of love for Him is typical of countless personal 
services that children may give with the Spirit of Christ to those 
in their homes or at school. Opportunities to serve as a group 
can be provided through work done by a class to earn money 
for missions, or by some united service for the church and 
Sunday-school, or for the poor in the parish. The essential 
part is the personal gift of strength and time and money and 
effort that alone makes service a genuine expression of a child's 
Christian life. 

We must help children, too, to understand the real value of 
prayer and give them wise guidance about coming to God with 
the desires of their hearts. Otherwise we may be faced some 
day by a child who will say to us what a small boy said one 
night to his mother when he had finished his bedtime prayer. 
Looking steadily into the eyes of his mother, he announced: 
."Mother, I don't believe there's anything in this business of 
prayer." It was not till then that she realized how inadequate 
her teaching had been. Children should be taught to come to 
their heavenly Father simply and naturally to thank Him for 
His care and the joys of the day and for all the gifts of His love. 
Thankfulness leads to reverence. They need also to ask His 
help in doing what is right, in speaking the truth, in obeying 
willingly, in doing faithful work, in conquering ill temper, and 
in making right the wrong-doings that are on their consciences. 
If they could be helped thus early to go to God for spiritual gifts 
there would be a growing life of real understanding with God. 
They can be led to trust God's care, that He will provide for 
their needs through their parents or through other friends and 
that He gives us all the privilege of sharing our good things 
with others. Prayer can be a means of teaching unselfishness 
and thoughtfulness for others rather than an eager petitioning 
for selfish desires. If not a sparrow falls to the ground un- 
noticed by the heavenly Father, surely the children may come 
to Him with all the thoughts and needs of their hearts and 
speak them out to Him in full confidence that He will under- 
stand and help. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 



144 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 

BIBLE STUDY XVII 
Christ's Teaching about Children 

Read Matt. 19 : 13-15. Do not defraud any little child of its right to 
come to Jesus Christ, for it instinctively understands the spirit of the 
kingdom of heaven. Do not wait until it has grown puzzled about life 
and feels the first sense of loneliness and of being misunderstood. Help 
every little child to be conscious of its heavenly Father's presence and love. 
We need to remember that the heart of religion is the sense of relationship 
to God issuing in a spirit of trust and the unresisting will; all this, which 
will be natural to a child, we grown folk so often struggle to attain. The 
battles of adult life will be easier if the children have experienced the 
blessing of Christ. 

Read Matt. 18 : 1-14. The teaching of Jesus Christ is explicit. It is 
the child spirit in us that wins our entrance into the kingdom, verses 3-4. 
Many of us have learned to become as little children as we have lived with 
them. We must ourselves live toward our heavenly Father in the same 
Bpirit of humble dependence and simple directness; and with the same 
eagerness to enter into life and make discoveries. We need to pray often 
the words of that old hymn: 

"As a little child relies 

On a care beyond his own; 
Knows he's neither strong nor wise; 

Fears to take one step alone: 
Thus let me with Thee abide 
As my Father, Friend, and Guide." 

In verse 5 and in Mark 9 : 36, 37 the test is applied to us. Is the spirit 
of our Lord so truly in our hearts that we can receive a little child in His 
name, or have we grown so far away from simplicity that we find nothing 
in common between us ? If we discover that we cannot honestly ' ' receive ' ' 
a child, we would better examine our hearts and see if we ourselves are 
living consciously and trustfully as children of our Father. It would lift 
our Christianity out of the confusion of theological differences into the 
realm of real fellowship with God; and people would discover their Father. 

In verses 6-9. The test Jesus applies to us is more severe. He uses 
the strongest figure He can summon to warn us against the sin of causing 
"one" little one "to stumble." Every child has the right to live in the 
closest fellowship with his heavenly Father, and our supreme service to 
God is so to live that we will make it easy for any child to find his Father. 
How would our life have to be changed in its conversation, spirit, and 
daily influence if we applied to our hearts this solemn warning of Jesus 
Christ? Are there barriers in our interpretations of Jesus' teachings, 
in the inconsistencies of our lives, and in our indifferent spirit that baffle 
any child that is trying to find God? 

Read verse 10 in the light of the preceding verses. Here the challenge 
of our Lord applies to every little one in the world, even those who seem 
beyond the circle of our sympathies. We are not to despise one of these 
little ones, because they are so close and dear to our Father. The verses 



RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN 145 

that follow, 11-14, reveal the very heart of God as He seeks out the one 
who has gone astray. It is not sufficient that the little one be not de- 
spised — we must do more than that: we must seek, even at great cost, the 
one child who has missed the way. It is not easy to read this teaching 
of Jesus and continue to live and think as we have done in the past. Per- 
chance we shall find it true of us as it was of the Pharisees to whom our 
Lord said: " Ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter 
not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter" 
(Matt. 23 : 13). 

Questions for Thought 
How do I know I have entered the kingdom of heaven ? Have I met the 
test of becoming "as little children"? How does my attitude toward 
children and sympathy for their religious life prove this? < 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE SOURCES OF GROWTH 

Every normal Christian life is a growing life. When the roots 
of life are centred in Jesus Christ there should be no limit to 
the possible capacity for Christian thinking and living. When 
our Lord said, "I am come that they may have life and may 
have it abundantly," He not only meant eternal length of life, 
but depth of life which would release all the hidden powers of 
personality, and breadth of life which would make us kin to 
the whole world in sympathy and appreciation; He meant also 
height of life which would lift us up from sordid thoughts to 
limitless reaches of heavenly wisdom. Therefore, when once 
the decision has been made that in all things Jesus Christ shall 
have the foremost place in the heart, the will in obedience to 
God works out His purposes in daily Christian living. Every 
spiritual impression requires a corresponding expression. Every 
inspiration toward loyalty to Christ should issue in some for- 
ward step. 

There are certain ways in which the Christian life naturally 
expresses itself and connects itself with sources of growth. 
Chief amongst these is the open confession of Christ as Re- 
deemer and King through the union with His body, the church. 
Although some people think it is possible to live a Christian life 
without becoming a member of the church visible, such an atti- 
tude is contrary to the teaching of the disciples of our Lord and 
the counsel of our Lord Himself. He asks for open, fearless 
loyalty to Him by confessing Him before men: "Every one 
therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also con- 
fess before my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 10 : 32). 
And the church is the body of believers in Christ who stand 
before the world as a witness to His kingship and redemption. 
Our Lord's prayer that all His own should be one in Him gives 
deep significance to His church. 

Likewise, we cannot lightly disregard the solemn obligations 
of baptism and the Holy Communion. Too often in this age 

146 



SOURCES OF GROWTH 147 

of excessive individualism some are prone to regard the church 
as a human organization or club of which they may become a 
part or not according to personal likes or dislikes of ministers, 
members, or services. We must help them to see that the 
church is made up of imperfect people like themselves who need 
worship and praise and inspiration. It is reasonable to infer 
that this help will come in greater measure through the cor- 
porate life of the church than from any group outside who are 
not openly loyal to Christ. Samuel Johnson voiced this truly 
when he said: "To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, 
of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only 
by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless 
it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by 
stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example." 

It is usually best to unite with that branch of the church 
with which one has been most closely associated from childhood. 
If there are no such associations, we should counsel those who 
have decided to be Christians to relate themselves to that 
denomination in which they find the largest opportunities for 
worship, service, and loyalty to Christ. 

Every Christian needs also the reinforcement of Christian 
friendships. It is one of the wonderful ways in which God 
completes our life and helps us to understand the fulness of 
His character as we see different reflections of it in the hearts 
of His friends. All Christians need two kinds of friends: they 
need to feel a sense of responsibility for some younger or weaker 
Christians who need their strength and help; they also need 
friendships with those from whom they can get spiritual stimu- 
lus. We need not only to hold others to their best but also to 
be held to our best by others. Christian friendships are potent 
factors in our experiences. They help us to grow in reverence, 
humility, self-denial, loyalty, self-forgetfulness, and patience. 
The spirit of friendliness toward others is one of the marks of 
the spirit of Christ. 

The logical outcome of the spirit of friendliness in the Chris- 
tian is the development of a social consciousness and sense 
of obligation to others. This ought inevitably to lead to some 
form of Christian service for the church, the community, and 
the individual. We shall not have done all we should to help 
until we guide young Christians to some definite form of ser- 
vice that will enlist all their powers. The call to service might 



148 SOURCES OF GROWTH 

well be voiced in those words: "I expect to pass through this 
world but once. Any good that I can do or any kindness that 
I can show let me do it now; let me not neglect or defer it, for 
I shall not pass this way again." 

The average church member needs to be shown the many 
natural outlets for service that are possible. They need to 
see the daily opportunity for Christian service through their 
homes in being true to all those who come to their doors. There 
are countless maids and seamstresses, laundresses and porters, 
children and visitors who could be won to a Christian life if the 
average Christian woman obeyed her call to service. We must 
not only be good but we must be good for something and be a 
channel for God's life-giving power. 

As time goes on the desire will come to form some definite 
purpose for service whereby one's brief life here can count most 
for the kingdom. The purposeful Christian will not go on 
drifting from one daily incident to another, but will shape 
plans toward some great objective and find out God's purpose 
for the life. This discovery may send loyal Christians into 
their own homes to live there according to the will of God; it 
may send them out to teach, to engage in business, to the pro- 
fessional service in philanthropic or religious work, or it may 
carry them into the life of a foreign missionary. The work is 
incidental; the discovery of our special place in the will of God 
is essential. 

We shall not have done all that we can for young Christians 
unless we have helped them to some simple working method 
of Bible study that will feed the springs of their spiritual life. 
Bible classes and courses are essential for most people, to give 
direction and background to their religious thinking, but they 
can never take the place of the private study of the Bible which 
presses its claim on the conscience and reveals the thoughts 
and intents of the heart. If the Bible is taken as a library of 
books, each book having been written for certain occasions, 
people, and purposes, it will repay the thoughtful reader if it 
is studied book by book with an intelligent appreciation of the 
special message each was meant to convey. We need to help 
people to find something more than moral precepts in the Bible; 
to feel the throbbing message of the writer in all its entirety 
and to trace the way the message of God to men won its way 
in spite of obstacles and prejudices of men. It is the wonder- 



SOURCES OF GROWTH 149 

ful record of humanity's experiences with God, and every Chris- 
tian experience to-day needs the guide-posts and stimulus and 
corrective of the teaching of the Bible. It is the chief way, too, 
in which the personality of our Lord can be kept vivid and com- 
pelling in our hearts. 

The reality of our personal experiences with God becomes 
vivid when we express them in our relationships with people. 
We possess for ourselves only what we share. As Doctor 
Coe remarks : " Social communion is the very experience which 
gives the ' me' any meaning at all" (Coe, Psychology of Religion, 
p. 198). It is as we realize some one else to whom our life must 
be related in love that we grow conscious of our own self- 
expression. As the teaching runs: "We know that we have 
passed from death into life, because we love the brethren" 
"He that loveth not abideth in death" (I John 3 : 14). Every 
Christian, therefore, who is eager to have an increasingly con- 
scious fellowship with God must find some way of sharing his 
fellowship with others, or, rather, must expect to find this fellow- 
ship with God vivid through loving regard for others. A college 
girl who had recently given God, consciously, the control of 
her life was asked by a friend what it meant to be a Christian. 
As she shared her experience with an affectionate plea that her 
friend should not miss the possibility of having a similar joy, 
the response came quickly: "I want to know Him, too." The 
effect of this acceptance by her friend brought such a sense of 
God's reality and nearness to this college student as she had 
never dared to expect. "I knew God must truly be real to 
me," she said, "or I never could have made Him real to my 
friend — then it all came over me — the sense of His presence." 
If only we could hold on to this secret we should find a new 
joyousness and sense of reinforcement in our life. It is as our 
Lord said: "Where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them," and " Go make disci- 
ples . . . and lo ! I am with you all the days even unto t}ie end 
of the world" (Matt. 18 : 20 and 28: 19, 20). 

There is no end to the relationship of love. If we have in 
love helped another to find in Jesus Christ the secret of peace 
and power to live victoriously, we will surely be ready to 
protect that life and help it to full fruition. This will involve 
our "standing by" in sympathy when some sudden fiery test 
comes; it may mean a letter when one is facing an untried 



150 SOURCES OF GROWTH 

experience, a word of courage or confidence, a time of inter- 
cession, a chance for special service, or bringing to that life 
the comradeship of a new friend who can help. In short, we 
will show in our relationship the marks of love and help to 
bring a little nearer the answer to that prayer of our Lord: 
"That they may all be one . . . and the world may believe 
that thou didst send me" (John 17 : 21). 

Lastly, we must help those to whom we are spiritually re- 
lated to see that a Christian life means that the process of 
growth must be continuous, " first the blade, then the ear, then 
the full corn in the ear." We must expect our desires, our 
scale of values, our vision of the intellectual reaches of the 
spiritual life to change and broaden and be part of a larger 
perspective; but the centre and source of our life in Jesus Christ 
will never change. If people are "rooted and grounded in 
Him," we must help them to realize that there will be no limit 
to the new life and its new perceptions as they live in our 
Father's world and enter into all the heritage of the past and 
the fresh discoveries of the future. They need to see that 
their part is to keep themselves in the love of God by yielding 
Him instant obedience and by keeping heart and mind open for 
the growing revelation of God. 

BIBLE STUDY XVIII 

A Growing Christian 
I. God's expectation. 

Read Isaiah 5 : 1-7. Here is a story of the disappointment of God 
over His people who did not bear the fruit of righteousness in return for 
all the care and patience and nurture He had bestowed upon them. Note 
the pathos in the words of verse 4. It is the glory of a vine that it bears 
fruit; it is profitable for nothing if it does not produce grapes, for there is 
no other way in which it can be of use. Jesus continues the use of this 
figure in John 15 : 1-17. What the branch could not do of itself, it can 
do if it abides in Jesus Christ, the vine. "Apart from me ye can do 
nothing," says our Lord, but if we are really finding our source of life in 
Him, God will so cleanse and prune us by His holy discipline that we shall 
bear much fruit and be indeed true disciples. Therefore every Christian 
is bound to grow and bear fruit or forfeit his union with the vine, Jesus 
Christ. The cleansing comes through the word of Christ (verse 3), and the 
spirit that flows through the branches into the fruit is love (verses 16 and 
17). 

See Mark 4 : 26-29 and II Peter 3 : 17, 18 for the description of the 
growing spiritual life. We cannot measure or hasten our growth; all we 
can do is to fulfil the conditions in preparing the ground and receiving the 



SOURCES OF GROWTH 151 

seed and yielding to the care of the husbandman; then the growth comes 
naturally, " first the blede, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear." 

II. Some means of growth. 

(1) See Acts 2 : 36-39; 16 : 29-34; Matt. 10 : 32, 33; 28 : 19; Mark 
1 : 9-11; Romans 6 : 1-4. Here we are shown the privilege of confessing 
our leal love for Jesus Christ by identifying ourselves with him in the 
sacrament of baptism. The example of our Lord, His teaching to the 
disciples, and their preaching to others ought to present an irresistible 
appeal to all who desire to share in the redemption offered through Jesus 
Christ. No denominational differences ought to deter us from the open 
confession of our relation to God symbolized by the rite of baptism. 

(2) Read Luke 22 : 14-20; I Cor. 11 : 23-26; John 6 : 52-57. The 
sacrament of the Holy Communion was instituted by our Lord as a means 
of helping us to enter into the intimate fellowship with Him with the 
body of His disciples. Through it our hearts are fed by the renewal of 
the gift of life as we pledge again our fidelity to Jesus Christ. It is the 
centre of our devotion to our crucified Lord and the place where we meet 
as members of the body of Christ in thanksgiving for all He has done for us. 

(3) Read Matt. 18 : 19, 20; Acts 12 : 12-17 and 20 : 36-38. One 
means of spiritual strength is through fellowship in prayer. There is the 
special promise of the presence of Christ when two or three are meeting 
in united prayer, and the renewed strength and spiritual vision come as 
a result. We neglect too often the help that we might have if we prayed 
often one with another. 

(4) See Acts 1 : 8 and I John 3 : 16. The Christian life is a dynamic 
and we cannot live unto ourselves. We grow and increase in strength 
only as we share our fife with others in some service that releases the power 
of God in their lives. It is our business to find out the purpose of God 
for us and give Him our loyal service. It takes time to find our place of 
service, but we are given wisdom if we are ready with open heart and mind 
to follow God's guidance. The counsel from Henry Drummond's experi- 
ence has helped many Christians: 

"1. Pray. 

"2. Think. 

"3. Talk to wise people, but do not regard their decision as final. 

"4. Beware of the bias of your own will, but do not be too much 
afraid of it (God never unnecessarily thwarts a man's nature and likings, 
and it is a mistake to think that His will is in line of the disagreeable). 

"5. Meantime do the next thing (for doing God's will in small things 
is the best preparation for knowing it in great things). 

"6. When decision and action are necessary, go ahead. 

"7. Never reconsider the decision when it is finally acted upon; and 

"8. You will probably not find out till afterward, perhaps long after- 
ward, that you have been led at all." 

Questions for Thought 
At what times have I been most conscious of God? Under what con- 
ditions have I grown most in my spiritual life during the past year? What 
are the greatest hindrances to spiritual growth? In what ways would you 
build up foundations for the Christian life of a young man or woman? 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE PERILS OF SUCCESS 

Eternal vigilance is the price of continuous power in service. 
We may spend so much time in cultivating other people's gar- 
dens that our own runs to weeds. Our success in helping others 
to know God may blind us to subtle spiritual snares that will 
rob us of our power. Many an earnest Christian has begun a 
career of unselfish service for Christ in which evidences of 
spiritual power and leadership have not been wanting; and the 
lives of many have been enriched. But after a time the power 
of God may seem ineffective in the life and all the activities 
may seem benumbed by a subtle paralysis* The service may 
go on as usual, but it seems more like marking time than making 
progress. Fortunate is that one who has the sense to stop 
at once and take a day off for prayer and self-examination to 
discover the spiritual foe. This chapter need not have been 
written if all of us who are busy in Christian work had such 
days at regular intervals for the good of our souls. It is a 
necessity for us all, and it is a pity that so many of us have to 
be driven to it by the shock of some experience rather than by 
finding this communion with the loving Father the natural 
result of the eager questioning heart of a humble child. 

" If chosen souls could never be alone 
In deep-mid silence open-doored to God 
No great thing ever had been dreamed or done. 
The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude." 

(Lowell.) 

If we look at the state of our heart we are likely to find any 
one of a number of foes that has crept in silently. 

(1) Chief amongst these is the snare of self-confidence. This 
develops in the wake of successful service. At the beginning 
we are conscious of our need of guidance and depend upon God 
in childlike humility. The opportunities for service increase and 

152 



PERILS OF SUCCESS 153 

we feel the pressure of crowded days. Then it is that we are 
tempted to forsake our habits of devotion, to let service for 
others take the place of secret prayer and Bible study. We are 
thus cut off from the current of power and our service seems 
rather to manifest self-efficiency than the power of the Spirit. 
Before we know it we are dazzling people with ourselves rather 
than imparting life. 

(2) Closely related to the first danger is the temptation to pro- 
fessionalism. Messages that at first were living and virile 
may become mechanical and suggestive of cant. They may 
have been real in our experience years ago but they have be- 
come moth-eaten possessions that are packed away in the 
attic of our hearts. It is so easy to use the accustomed phrases 
of our past experiences with a glib tongue, especially if people 
expect us to say something. It is equally easy to speak be- 
yond our experience, using the wisdom of others as the proper 
counsel for spiritual difficulties. This cant may be manifest 
in our audible prayers as well as in our conversation, and there 
is nothing that repels one more quickly or mocks our service 
more surely. There are Christians who seemed to have stopped 
growing years ago. Their conception of God is no greater 
and their spiritual discoveries have no present tense. They 
have no sympathy with those who are straining every nerve 
to answer the questions of to-day, for long ago they ceased to 
"fight the good fight of faith." We dare not be content with 
our growth in grace without losing our sincerity. The only 
safety lies in guarding the habits of our secret life. 

The measure of honesty with which we face God's truth for 
our personal needs and purpose to express only that which we 
experience and learn for ourselves is the measure of our vital 
message. The word of a life always begets the response of a 
life. 

(3) As we meet with a measure of success in service we are also 
likely to be overtaken by a spirit of impatience. God's Spirit 
works slowly and thoroughly and much of what is being done 
is hidden from human sight. In our eagerness to get "quick 
results," we sometimes expect too much and try to force a hot- 
house growth. We need to remember that not only is a day as 
a thousand years in God's sight but "a thousand years as a 
day." A score of ineffectual attempts to help, and months 
and years of waiting do not warrant us in ceasing from prayer 



154 PERILS OF SUCCESS 

and perseverance. The spirit of impatience cuts the nerve of 
influence. 

(4) Experience in dealing with human nature increases our 
power of discernment. We are in danger of letting this gift 
for analysis of character grow more rapidly than our sympathy 
for the needs we have discerned. It is so easy to lose hold of 
the love that "hopeth all things, believeth all things" and that 
" never faileth." When one takes away the spirit of love -from 
the spirit of discernment, the spirit of criticism alone remains. 
It is only the truth spoken in love from a compassionate heart 
that does any one any good. Most people have from time to 
time a sickening sense of their weaknesses; but they do not often 
have the comradeship of one who knows these weaknesses and 
yet in quiet trust refuses to think of them as permanent. There 
is no greater magnet than the drawing power of an honest, lov- 
ing friend. 

(5) It is quite possible also to undermine our character if in any 
way we are betrayed into breaking confidences imparted by others, 
or permit these evidences of trust to minister to vanity and 
self-gratulation. We must cultivate the power of "forgetting 
those things that are behind," lest future opportunities for ser- 
vice be lost through subtle pride in past achievement. Each 
new relationship is a fresh adventure unlike any in the past 
and needs to be met with a humble, reverent spirit. When we 
begin recounting our past successes even to ourselves we find 
that we begin to lose the childlike spirit that makes us worthy 
of being trusted again. Perhaps too we may take it for granted 
that we know just how to deal with the new opportunity be- 
cause we had success in the past. This confidence in ourselves 
and our experience may keep us from seeking fresh guidance 
and bring us a humiliating failure. We are to remember, how- 
ever, the wonders of God's part in it all, the way we were led, 
and the never-failing promise of His presence, in order that our 
faith in His faithfulness may grow increasingly sure. 

(6) We dare not neglect the sources of our faith, for a lack of 
confident trust in the keeping power of God and the watchful- 
ness of the Holy Spirit often proves a snare to the Christian 
worker. At such times it is easy to yield to the spirit of un- 
belief and fear and to find ourselves unfitted for further service. 
Times of success are often followed by temptations to depres- 
sion and physical reaction. Then too the needs of others and 



PERILS OF SUCCESS 155 

a sense of responsibility for their welfare press heavily on the 
mind and heart. Nothing will prevent a depressing physical 
reaction so effectively as a buoyant faith and glad confidence in 
God, that He will "keep that which is committed to Him/' 
that the burdens of the heart are His and not ours to carry. 

(7) Another peril which lies in the pathway of successful ser- 
vice is the tendency to usurp God's place as judge of a heart. We 
find ourselves slipping into the habit of drawing dogmatic con- 
clusions about people and assuming to question the motive of 
their hearts. We prejudge a situation and are slow to make 
full allowance for a changed attitude of mind or growth in 
spiritual life. This is always keenly discerned by those around 
us and our chances for help and fellowship are lost. We need 
to watch and pray daily against this weakness. 

(8) In the beautiful fellowship of sympathetic understanding 
that we have with those who have been influenced toward the Chris- 
tian life, a temptation may enter. We may influence people 
to depend more on us as workers than on the voice of God in 
the heart. We may often stand between some one and God. 
We have not helped another permanently until that one has de- 
veloped an independent and ever-deepening relation with God. 
All fellowship in spiritual things should tend to this end. A 
Christian university student, when asked about the spiritual 
welfare of another, thus stated the issue tersely: "She gives 
to others what she should give to God, and she asks of others 
what she should ask from God." It takes the wisdom of our 
Lord to know how to have a sincere spiritual fellowship with 
people and subordinate it all to the influence of God. We 
generally know by instinct when we are accepting for our- 
selves what by right belongs to God. 

(9) We need also to watch out for the temptations that come at 
the time of reaction after a period of successful service. Morbid 
thoughts are likely to result from physical weariness and 
mental fatigue, and earnest Christians often fail to discern 
the true cause and the remedy. The teachings concerning the 
unity of spirit, mind, and body show us how dependent each 
is upon the others; when the body suffers the reaction on mind 
and spirit is inevitable, and the reverse is also true. One of 
the common experiences of Christians at such times is the 
temptation to look back on past guidance of God with uncer- 
tainty of conviction. Such questions as these come to us: 



156 PERILS OF SUCCESS 

" Did I do as I should have done about that particular oppor- 
tunity ?" "The results have not been those I anticipated; 
was I right in thinking that I was following the will of my 
Lord?" Many a Christian has been shorn of strength and 
fitness for further service by yielding to these suggestions. 
They remind us of the subtle suggestion of the serpent in the 
Garden of Eden: "Yea, hath God said?" We need rather to 
think of Paul's imagination when overwhelmed by these doubts: 
" Wherefore, forgetting those things that are behind and reach- 
ing forward, I press on toward the mark." The present oppor- 
tunity only is ours, the past is beyond our control. God holds 
us responsible for following the light that is shed on the present 
and future, confident that our steps are " ordered of the Lord and 
he delighteth in our way." 

In conclusion, the Christian worker will feel daily the pres- 
sure of criticism from some who regard religious work as an 
impertinence and from Christians who do not share the sense 
of personal responsibility for the welfare of others. Many 
people are afraid of any sign of religious enthusiasm and dis- 
like what seems unconventional. They are, in reality, too 
timid to make a spiritual venture or to pay the price of a life 
of faith; but they extract a virtue from their weakness in the 
comforting thought that they are "naturally conservative." 
It is not easy to be free and spontaneous in such an atmosphere, 
and the temptation to dilute our message and conform to ac- 
cepted traditions often robs us of spiritual power. The fear 
of seeming "eccentric" or "old-fashioned" or "narrow" or 
"emotional" inhibits us all more than we know, and most of us 
are so sensitive to the conventional restraints of the well-bred 
religious point of view that we are tempted to forego simplicity 
and naturalness. It takes a resolute purpose and an intensive 
study of the life of our Lord to go on simply and quietly, against 
the tide of human opinion if need be. The joy of leading an- 
other to know Jesus Christ makes every struggle against 
temptation worth while. 

There are thousands of people who have never heard the 
message of Jesus Christ interpreted in human ways through 
daily fellowship with their friends. If they are ever to hear 
it we shall have to be true to those things that we have seen and 
experienced and be willing to share them with our friends. 
The more natural we are the better we shall succeed. If we 



PERILS OF SUCCESS 157 

value at all our experience with God and our relationship to 
Jesus Christ, we shall find it more difficult each day to keep it 
to ourselves. 

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, 
and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life; • . . that which 
we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may 
have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the 
Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" (I John 1 : 1-3), 



BIBLE STUDY XIX 

The Secret of Power 

I. Power within. 

See II Cor. 12 : 6-10. Strength in weakness. God sufficient for per- 
sonal inadequacy. The glory of our Christian faith is the fact that human 
weakness plus God's strength is stronger than any human strength. No 
thorn in the flesh can hinder God, but it saves us from self-confidence, and 
pride, and easy contentment with ourselves. In the roll of the heroes of 
faith are those who "from weakness were made strong," and also "en- 
dured as seeing Him who is invisible." It is out of such human inade- 
quacy that God works miracles. When we have reached the limit of the 
possible, then God does the impossible. Why is it that we are not willing 
to be weak? 

II. Love triumphing over everything. 

Read Romans 8 : 35-39. Jesus Christ never promised us quiet, easy 
lives. He promised us His peace in spite of tribulation (John 16 : 33). 
We know the reality of the peace because it is present when everything 
conspires to take it away. We know love when it stands by us even 
though everything else fails. Why is it that people are so slow to believe 
the word of Christ and test it out? Have we ever been as sure of the un- 
failing love of God in tribulations as Paul was? If not, why not? 

III. The source of power in meeting the need of others. 

Read Mark 9 : 14-29. Here we have the moral dynamic with which 
to work miracles in the name of Jesus, and this faith comes only through 
unselfish intercessory prayer. If our power over other lives is limited by 
our prayer, why do we not look upon prayer as the most essential method 
of achieving results? There are people all about us who are spiritually 
inert; who must be helped by some one to get deliverance from their 
bondage. How is help to come to them unless it is mediated to them 
through us as channels? Am I willing, through prayer, to pay the price 
of having power to set captives free and to open blind eyes f Jesus said: 
"Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me even so send I you." 
Let us rise to the challenge, that the burden of proof may rest on the faith- 



158 PERILS OF SUCCESS 

ful word of our Lord. Our part is to voice Miss Havergal's prayer in all 
sincerity: 

"Lord, speak to me, that I may speak 
In living echoes of thy tone; 
As Thou hast sought, so let me seek, 
Thy erring children lost and lone. 

f'Oh, fill me with Thy fulness, Lord, 
Until my very heart o'erflow 
In kindling thought and glowing word, 
Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show. 

"Oh, use me, Lord, use even me, 

Just as Thou wilt, and when, and where; 
Until Thy blessed face I see. 
Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share." 



REFERENCES FOR READING 

CHAPTER I 

Ward, Harry, Social Evangelism. 

Rauschenbusch. The Social Principles of Jesus. 

Coffin, Henry Sloan, Social Aspects of the Cross. 

Smith, George Adam, Isaiah, volume II (Expositor's Bible). 

CHAPTER II 

James, William, Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals. 
Royce, Josiah, The PhVosophy of Loyalty. 
Angus, Discipleship. 

CHAPTER III 

Bushnell, Horace, Sermons for the New Life, chapter I, "Every Man's Life a 

Plan of God." 
Bull, The Missioned s Handbook, chapter I. 
Brooks, Phillips, Lectures on Preaching. 

CHAPTER IV 

Brent, Charles H., Leadership. 

Pearce, Mark Guy, The Christianity of Jesus Christ. 

Bull, The Missioner's Handbook, chapter II. 

CHAPTER V 

Payot, The Education of the Will. 

King, Henry C, Rational Living. 

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

Foster, Decision of Character. 

CHAPTER VI 

Coe, George A., The Psychology of Religion. 

Stevens, The Psychology of the Christian Soul. 

Warner, The Psychology of the Christian Life. 

King, Henry C, Personal and Ideal Elements in Education. 

Home, Psychological Principles of Education. 

CHAPTER VII 

McComb, The Power of Self-Suggestion. 
Bligh, The Direction of Desire. 
Sadler, The Physiology of Faith and Fear, section 2. 

159 



160 REFERENCES FOR READING 

White, The Mechanism of Character Formation. 
Munsterberg, Hugo, Psychotherapy. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Coe, George A., A Social Theory of Religious Education. 
Rowland, The Right to Believe. 

James, William, Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals. 
Drummond, Henry, The New Evangelism. 

CHAPTER IX 

Swetenham, L., Conquering Prayer. 
McFadyen, J. E., The Prayers of the Bible. 
Fosdick, H. E., The Meaning of Prayer. 
Jones, Rufus M., The Double Search. 
Phelps, Austin, The Still Hour. 

CHAPTER X 

Coe, George A., Education in Religion and Morals. 
Bull, The Missioner's Handbook, chapter III. 
Law, William, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. 
Bunyan, John, Pilgrim's Progress. 

CHAPTER XI 

BushnelL Horace, Nature and the Supernatural. 
Glover, T. R., The Jesus of History. 

CHAPTER XII 

Ross, George A. Johnston, The God We Trust. 
Simpson, Carnegie, The Fact of Christ. 
Mackenzie, W. Douglas, The Final Faith. 
Jefferson, Charles E., Things Fundamental. 
Bushnell, Horace, The Character of Jesus. 
McConnell, Francis J., Personal Christianity. 

CHAPTER XIII 

King, Henry C, A Rational Fight for Character. 
Cabot, Richard C, What Men Live by. 

CHAPTER XIV 

Cabot, Ella Lyman, Everyday Ethics. 

Cond6, Bertha, The Business of Being a Friend. 

Moxcey, Mary E., Girlhood and Character. 

CHAPTER XV 

Coe, George A., Education in Religion and Morals. 
Warner, The Psychology of the Christian Life, part II. 



REFERENCES FOR READING 161 

CHAPTER XVI 

King, Henry C, The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life. 
Robinson, Forbes, Letters to His Friends. 

CHAPTER XVII 

Rankin, Mary Everett, A Course for Beginners in Religious Education* 
Alexander, John L., The Boy and the Sunday School. 
Neale, J. M., Sermons to Children. 

CHAPTER XVIII 

Brent, Charles H., With God in Prayer. 

Smith, George Adam, The Life of Henry Drummond. 

CHAPTER XIX 
Spurgeon, Charles H., Lectures to My Students. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



